STWR - Share The World's Resources

The world is holding its breath, still trying to grasp the potential enormity of what is unfolding. Economic downturns and stock market crashes are hardly unfamiliar, of course, even if a decade or so seems a long time ago for western consumers habituated to rising house prices and non-stop shopping. But this crisis threatens to be rather different, a Big One. 

The most striking dimension of today's world economy is its huge and uncontrolled financialisation, which is not being invested in production and is merely benefiting a few multi-billionaires. Less than 1% of the Indian public has substantial share holdings. But the recent crash in the stockmarket makes front page headlines. Why?

Watching the corporate media report the ‘financial crisis’ is instructive. From the perspective of power, it is important that a steadying hand is applied to the tiller of news and commentary on the crisis, and the global economy itself.

With Wall Street capital disappearing as fast as foreclosures are climbing, one foreign head of state had an epiphany. French President Nicholas Sarkozy advanced the idea recently that the global financial system is "out of its mind." To develop this theory further, I've reconstructed below some of the mileposts on our journey to this financial loony bin.

"Every crisis is an opportunity; someone will exploit it. The question we face is this: Will the current turmoil become an excuse to transfer yet more public wealth into private hands, to wipe out the last vestiges of the welfare state, all in the name of economic growth?"

This is a crucial time in Davos.  In the 1990s crises affected the periphery of the global economy; today they have spread to its core.

Davos is in a state of shock. Regulars at the talkfest in the snow in Switzerland are accustomed to turning up for a few days of mutual back-slapping, congratulating themselves on the robust state of the global economy and its potential for limitless expansion.