According to Larry Elliot in the Guardian Weekly (21st November) the G8 (and the US that leads it) have lost their economic leadership in favour of a much more diverse G20 that met last weekend to tackle the calamitous collapse of the global economy.
Thank God for that, I hear you say. The only problem is that the meeting ended reaffirming the same principles of ‘free’ trade and light-touch financial regulation that got us in this mess in the first place.
Instead, what the leaders responsible for 80 per cent of global trade suggest to save the world from financial meltdown is more of what has already been taking place: the subsidy of those zillions of losses by the richest section of the world with more zillions of dollars from you, me and everyone else, so that we can go back to where we were two years ago.
Are they kidding? No, I really don’t feel sorry for the US and its loss of economic leadership. Instead, I feel sorry for the hundreds of millions of the world’s poor who are suffering, and by the looks of it will continue to suffer, the consequences of the global economic and financial policies that led to this mess because they did the least to produce the crisis but will end-up paying the consequences.
And the consequences are pretty dire. Listening to president Evo Morales in New York at the UN this week, we learnt that, in a matter of weeks, leaders of the richest nations have authorised spending 30 times (yes 30 times) the amount spent so far in (not) reaching the Millenium Development Goals. At least one thing is clear and that is where the priorities lie for the wealthiest nations.
No, thinking the unthinkable will have to go beyond the mere reform of the international financial system proposed by the G20 meeting. If will Hutton is right, it has to “overhaul the way we do capitalism” (Hutton, W. The Failure of Market Failure: Towards a 21st Century Keynesianism www.nesta.org.uk ). I’m not sure anyone has told our G20 leaders yet. And the problem is that no alternatives of any worth seem to be coming from the left. Anyone there?
Thursday, 20 November 2008
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As for the global economic crisis - it will be business as usual for capitalism. So long as you have capitalist dogs and their political lackeys doing their bidding, nothing will change. Will Hutton and others like him mean well, but it is not realistic. His style of capitalism just isn't practical as a economic mechanism. It would be like expecting a pack of Hyenas to become vegetarians. It's not in their nature, it's not going to happen. Capitalism is as human as greed, lying, stealing and fucking bent bastards. If you want to prevent this bollocks from happening in the future, then you have to make those responsible personally liable, both financially and with criminal prosecutions - but that's not going to happen either.
If a poor man takes from a rich man, it's called theft and is a crime.
If a rich man takes rom a poor man, it's called business and good for the economy.
That's the world we live in.
Toodlepips
me
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