Costas Lapavitsas is Professor in Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and specialised in the theory of banking and finance.* The crisis of 2007-2009 arose after the burst of an enormous bubble in real estate in the USA and the UK. But the underlying trends that led to it are characteristic of financialisation in developed countries. The crisis also drew in a range of developing countries via the mechanisms of global trade and finance. It be...   read more >>