STWR - Share The World's Resources

What is striking about the 'contemporary West' is that its appetite for unbounded consumption fully took off at almost the exact moment that its capacity to pay for it began to diminish - underpinning a global financial crisis and the current transfer of power from West to East, argues Guy Rundle.  

The financial crisis undermines all the ideological assumptions that have supported political discourse over the past 30 years. Now, with politicians standing 'naked', the crisis could result in profound and diverse changes to our way of structuring the economy, argues Martin Jacques.

The global economic crisis could result in an additional 18 million unemployed in the world, increased levels of vulnerable people in employment, and 200 million in developing countries being pushed into extreme poverty, says a report by the International Labour Organisation.

The world economy is mired in the severest financial crisis since the Great Depression, with the poorest nations most likely to suffer. Policymakers must coordinate their response to the crisis and urgently reform the international financial architecture, says a major report by DESA. 

The world economy will this year suffer its worst performance for more than 60 years with a serious risk that 50m people will lose their jobs, international organisations have warned. Reported by Krishna Guha et al.

Keynes is back in fashion, but his policies did not give to the state - at all levels - the leading role in investment that is now necessary. What is required is a radical rebalancing of relations between economic and social power, led by democratised state institutions, says Stuart Holland.

The challenge for Obama is to fund the much needed new deal without creating more debt. The solution lies in the government's ability to control the creation of money, which would provide a range of options for stabilising the future economy, argues Ellen Brown.