GLASS-STEAGALL ACT
A law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1933 which separated the more risky forms of banking
(“investment banking”) from ordinary commercial and savings banking. It was recognized in
the Great Depression that the combination of these
two forms of banking had aggravated the financial aspects of that great economic crisis,
and led to the failure of many more banks and the loss of savings deposits for millions of
people.
However, by the 1990s the ruling class had
forgotten this lesson. Their unscientific and totally erroneous economic theory convinced
them that great economic crises could no longer occur in the capitalist system. This,
combined with their enormous greed and desire to gamble with people’s savings, led to the
repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 at the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress
and a Democrat President (Bill Clinton) who remarked: “This [repeal] legislation is truly
historic. It is true the Glass-Steagall law is no longer appropriate to the economy in which
we live.” [“Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws”, Dow Jones
News Service, Nov. 12, 1999.] A mere 8 years later the
“Great Recession” began (the early stages of a new
depression), and the renewed merger of ordinary banking and
investment banking once again greatly aggravated the financial aspects of the crisis. (It is
true however, that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was mostly just a formality; the
banking industry had pretty much been ignoring it—with the tacit approval of the government—for
at least a decade.)
GLOBAL FINANCIAL ASSETS
The total financial assets owned by anyone or any company
or government organization over the entire world. In 2007 the global financial assets were
estimated to be $196 trillion by the McKinsey Global Institute (Mapping Global Capital
Markets: Fifth Annual Report, October 2008).
GLOBAL GDP
The total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for all the countries of the world,
for a given year. The Global GDP for 2008 was $61.3 trillion. However, in 2009 the global
GDP dropped for the first time in decades, by 2.4% in real terms, to just $58.2 trillion.
GLOBAL WARMING
The rise in the average surface temperature of the Earth due to the emission of certain
gases into the atmosphere which cause it to more efficiently trap the radiant energy
from the sun, leading to a result similar to what occurs in a greenhouse. The most
important such gas is carbon dioxide, much of which is now being released into the
atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum.
GLOBALIZATION
[Intro material to be added... ]
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases
the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,
settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
“The bourgeoisie has through
its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production
and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has
drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All
old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being
destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life
and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up
indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries
whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe.
In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new
wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have
intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in
material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of
individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and
narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national
and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
“The bourgeoisie, by the
rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated
means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.
The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters
down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate
hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction,
to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it
calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one
word, it creates a world after its own image.” —Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the
Communist Party, Ch. I: MECW 6:487-8.
GLUT
See: OVERPRODUCTION
GNOSTICISM
See also: DEMIURGE
“Gnostics—followers of mystical, religious-philosophical doctrines during the early centures of our era. They tried to unite Christian theology and various theses of Platonic, Pythagorean and Stoic philosophy.” —Note 107, LCW 38.
GNP
See: GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT
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