Australia versus the US and UK : the kangaroo economy

This book is predicated on the 'somewhat unexpected possibility that there might, in fact, be more than one incarnation of liberal capitalism', with one key piece of evidence for this being 'the apparently sharp divide in the experience of the six Anglo-Saxon banking systems: whilst the American, British and Irish banks were very badly affected by the crisis, those of Canada, Australia and New Zealand performed far better' (Chapter 1). However, while I concure that there is much variation in capitalism, this is variation within a species. Just as there are fast cats, big cats, domestic cats, and wild cats, but there are no amphibious or reptilian cats, there are wide variation in how different capitalist economies may experience a financial crisis, but there are no capitalist systems without banks and debt-based finance. The variations between the US, UK and Australian experience of the 'Not So Global' crisis are very large, but they are predominantly differences of empirical degree, rather than manifestations of qualitatively different capitalist systems. In particular, Australia's apparent escape from the financial crisis can be largely explained by precisely the same factors that explain why the US's crisis was so deep, and why the UK's lay in between the two.