STWR - Share The World's Resources

The root cause of the financial crisis is not to be found in hedge funds and greedy bankers, but rather in a more fundamental social problem - huge inequalites in income distribution, argues Branko Milanovic.

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.

Deep structural causes based on free market principles and an addiction to economic growth underpin the global economic crisis. How do we explain these causes - and does the renewed fixation with the policies of John Maynard Keynes offer an adequate solution?

The Wall Street meltdown is not only due to greed and to the lack of government regulation of a hyperactive sector. This collapse stems ultimately from the crisis of overproduction that has plagued global capitalism since the mid-1970s - and the worst is not yet over, says Walden Bello.

The most fundamental flaw in the US financial market system is its inherent drive towards excess, and the end result is always systemic implosion.The costs are now coming headlong like a runaway freight train, writes Henry C K Liu.

The financial meltdown in the United States is huge, but it isn't unique. In a nutshell, our modern economic system has become divorced from what an "economy" is supposed to do in human terms, writes Joshua Holland.