STWR - Share The World's Resources

The risk today is that the new Keynesian doctrines for financial regulation will be used and abused to serve some of the same interests. Have those who pushed deregulation ten years ago learned their lesson? Or will they simply push for cosmetic reforms, asks Joseph Stiglitz.

Business economic and political power has become firmly entrenched in establishment thought and practice over the past thirty years, thanks to the unduly influence of Alan Greenspan and other key advocates of neoliberal ideology and policy, writes Edward S. Herman.

The global financial crisis exposes anew the flaws of a British polity that resists democratic modernisation, illustrating that the United Kingdom remains 'unfit for purpose'. We now need a new approach to the state that ends the fusion between money and politics, say Anthony Barnett and Gerry Hassan.

The leaders of the G-20 Group of countries are like the blind men who failed to see the elephant - which in this case is the crisis-stricken international financial system. We have been too busy partying, and the hangover is too strong for us to see the silver lining, says Devinder Sharma.

When the G20 summit convenes on 15 November, world leaders need to realise that economic alternatives cannot be designed by western powers alone, and a densely interconnected world with 2 billion marginalised people will never be either secure or stable, writes Dirk Messner and Simon Maxwell.

The logic of free-market capitalism states that the economy must grow continuously or face an unpalatable collapse. With the environmental situation reaching crisis point, however, it is time to stop pretending that mindlessly chasing economic growth is compatible with sustainability, argues Tim Jackson.