The Hidden Cause of "The Crisis of Capitalism": War Destroys Capital

Exactly a year ago, in March 2008 Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, estimated the global costs of the US military adventure in Irak at $3 trillion and predicted that this would severely harm the US economy. Stieglitz was being optimistic. He did not foresee that when the finances of the first industrial nation of the world collapse, a domino effect on all industrial partners follows.

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War does not produce capital. It creates suffering and destruction. In past times, these were mainly circumscribed to warring states. Globalization has changed this. Peaceful countries are punished almost as harshly as military ones.

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Wars are ruinous ventures that no nation can afford but that only states can launch. It is unfair and incorrect to blame the current woes of world finances on a failure of capitalism. They are the consequence of carefully encrypted war economies of nations heavily involved in military quagmires... Our economic crisis stems from eight years of hard state destructive action in places such as Irak, Afganistan, Gaza, Georgia... Further state action to correct it (eg. by printing paper money to fill the the financial craters caused by war) will only make this crisis worse.