Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Professor McDonough relates the origins of the property bubble and the crash to the four institutions that he outlined - globalisation; neoliberalism; repression of labour, which he explains is a reduction in the bargaining power of workers; and financialisation. He gives his definitions of those. He also refers to falling profitability from the 1960s onwards as a feature of international capitalism at that time. Were these institutions, globalisation, neoliberalism, financialisation and reduction of labour power, instruments that were coincidental at this time or were they designed to restore the profitability of capital internationally?