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Experts are sure the series of bankruptcies will not stop. They also forecast the closing of hundreds and thousands of financial companies.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has called the current crisis in the United States "the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War."
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Western futurologists of the 1980s created a theory of the postindustrial society - a market alternative to communism. They thought that scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs would solve a number of economic, environmental and demographic problems as well as adjust most social differences. The key values of the information society were education and science, whereas the main part of its economy was not an industrial company but a university, research center or, using modern language, technology park.
But everything went the wrong way. Banks and stock markets became the heart of the economies of the postindustrial countries, though the utopian capitalists thought it would be a technology park. Financial traders, not scientists, became the main economic agents.
The end of the 20th century saw galloping growth of the financial component in the U.S. economy. It resulted in a great number of credits and the growth of a financial bubble - a system where profit does not depend on real production, but is a result of sophisticated financial transactions.
The industrial ballast, that did not experience the anticipated technological stimulus, was transferred to regions with cheap work force, like Southeast Asia. Having distributed its industrial potential all over the world, America retained control over the cash flows coming into the national budget and became a bottomless market for industrial goods.
There lies the main danger for the U.S. itself, as well as for all the countries whose economies are tied with the American one. The warnings about the possibility of a financial collapse were frequent. However, it was very profitable to make money out of money, thus the funds in the bubble surpassed the real economy. The current financial crisis may result in a loss of control over the periphery economies, as well as a decline of demand in the U.S. that will result in overproduction crises in the countries that supply it and collapse of raw economies.
