PERSISTING UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE CRISIS OF WORLD PARADIGM SHIFT

As a beneficiary of what media, economic and political elites called “the longest economic expansion in the peacetime history of the United States”, George Bush was elected to the presidency in 1988. Less than a year later, as communism came apart at the seams, American political and economic pundits trumpeted the final triumph of laissez‐faire capitalism, and some even rushed to announce the “end of history”. The millenium had arrived.