The economic crisis that started in 2007 has become the deepest global contraction since the Great Depression, and the economic recovery has been the slowest and weakest on record. The costs of the crisis include a wave of unemployment that may take another decade or longer to clear, and higher taxes and reduced public services for working people, such as healthcare and education, in order to bail out wealthy bankers and bondholders. A whole generation, especially the youth, has been blighted by the crisis, which has had devastating consequences for hundreds of millions of people across the world. Protests and violent conflicts have flared up on several continents, in particular in Southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, which may develop into larger-scale conflicts. From the viewpoint of political economy, the current strategy of ‘adjustment within neoliberalism’ is economically inconsistent, socially dysfunctional and politically intolerable: · It is built on the premise that neoliberal capitalism is intrinsically stable, even though every finance-driven expansion since the 1970s has ended in a crisis requiring a large state bail-out. In other words, neoliberalism is dynamic only between crises, and it depends in boom and recession on extensive, supportive government intervention. · It is built on a misguided position on the role of the government in the economy, which assumes that massive fiscal spending is appropriate to support finance in crises, while it is never appropriate for governments to spend even much smaller amounts to protect employment, incomes, living standards and public services, either in better times when obtaining government revenue would be easier or – even – as a more effective response to crises. · It is also built on the notion that economic and social provision should be subjected to the self-interests of the financial system, an unacceptable proposition in itself that becomes absurd when the financial system has clearly demonstrated that it has become highly dysfunctional under neoliberalism. The Fifth Annual Conference in Political Economy will examine the global crisis from the complementary angles of scholarship, policies, conflicts and alternatives. Papers on all aspects of poitical economy are welcome, while those on these topics are especially encouraged.