Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse.
by David Korowicz
http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf
(Warning--large pdf file.)
This study considers the relationship between a global systemic banking, monetary and solvency crisis and its implications for the real-time flow of goods and services in the globalised economy. It outlines how contagion in the financial system could set off semi-autonomous contagion in supply- chains globally, even where buyers and sellers are linked by solvency, sound money and bank intermediation. The cross-contagion between the financial system and trade/production networks is mutually reinforcing.
It is argued that in order to understand systemic risk in the globalised economy, account must be taken of how growing complexity (interconnectedness, interdependence and the speed of processes), the de-localisation of production and concentration within key pillars of the globalised economy have magnified global vulnerability and opened up the possibility of a rapid and large- scale collapse. ‘Collapse’ in this sense means the irreversible loss of socio-economic complexity which fundamentally transforms the nature of the economy. These crucial issues have not been recognised by policy-makers nor are they reflected in economic thinking or modelling.
~75 pages, mostly on interactions of finance and resource constraints. Not much on ecological collapse.
(Thanks to roccman at Malthusia for the link.)
