Previously, we posted one heterodox economics view of the current global crisis (ecological economics - from Herman Daly, and from Robert Costanza). Below the fold is a guest essay from Professor Richard Wolff, a Marxian economist at the University of Mass-Amherst. He recently gave a very interesting video lecture Capitalism Hits the Fan. (I wish I were as good of speaker as he - I make it through my talks only because I think of the beer at the end)

I have thought for some time that resource constraints, especially energy, would be the end of free markets as we know them. It is now clear to most that government reactions to the popping of the credit bubble have shown no master plan other than one bailout being larger and grander in scale than the unsuccessful measure/attempt that preceded it. I do not know what 'ism' will replace capitalism- but I suspect it will be some socio-political 'ism' that is as yet undefined, something broader than all the heterodox schools which if successful, will need to integrate both our biophysical and biological realities. No discipline has the 'one' answer to our energy, environmental and social problems, which is why we continue to ask and integrate key questions with new data in this forum. (My own thoughts on the importance of Prof. Wolff's graph in relation to energy, debt and society follow his essay.)