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Trading State-Led Prosperity for Market-Led Stagnation: From the Golden Age to Global Neoliberalism James Crotty Department of Economics University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA Second Draft May 2000 To appear in Housing Finance Futures: Housing Policies, Gender Inequality, and Financial Globalization on the Pacific Rim Gary. Dymski and Dorene Isenberg, editors M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Forthcoming 2000 I would like to thank Gary Dymski for helpful comments, and the Political Economy Research Institute at the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus, and the Ford Foundation for their generous research support. This chapter presents a brief review of the origin and development of Neoliberal globalization, and evaluates economic performance in the Neoliberal era, first in the world economy, then, in more detail, in the US economy. The conclusion is pessimistic: unless a more effective framework for global integration than Neoliberalism is designed and put in place, it is highly unlikely that the basic economic needs of the majority of Koreans, Japanese, and Americans, including access to housing, will be adequately met. Overview of the Transition from the Golden Age to the Global Neoliberal Regime The qualitative shift in economic structures and policies that took place between the pre-WWII era and the so-called Golden Age of capitalism (or GA) in the three decades after the War constituted, to borrow a concept from sociologist Karl Polyani, a Great Transformation of our econ