Since the imposition of free market policies in the 1980s, globalization has come to represent an ideological battle between those who favor economic growth and deregulation through the growing power of multinational corporations, versus those who prefer a more sustainable and democratic approach to international development, socio-economic justice, and the securing of basic human rights and needs.
The most unnerving fact about the financial crisis is that it
started in the world’s strongest economy, the US. However, the crisis could have a silver lining: a wiser, more nimble US could emerge from the chaos, writes Branko Milanovic.
The
global financial crisis provides a unique opportunity to change, quickly and profoundly, the way the
majority thinks and feels and acts. I can see only one way out: the coming together of people, business and
government in a new incarnation of the Keynesian war economy strategy, says Susan George.
While 9/11 changed the way we view the world, the current financial
crisis has changed the way the world views us. And it will also change,
in some very fundamental ways, the way the world works - what historians might deem a true global watershed: the end of one period and the
beginning of another, says David Rothkopf.
The truth is now in plain sight: there was no
invisible hand! Money has been confused with real wealth: educated healthy citizens and the basic
productive eco-systems of our planet. Happily, there are ample alternatives to the Chicago Boys' version of free market capitalism, says Hazel Henderson.
The World Bank's revised international poverty line of $1.25, which on many counts
reveals a negligible difference in reducing poverty since 1981, raises legitimate questions about the assumed success of
globalisation, writes Adam W. Parsons.
The Chicago School has moved beyond a movement of economic theory into an aggressive agent of intellectual imperialism - but the collapse of market fundamentalism in economies everywhere is putting its theology on trial, writes Henry C K Liu.
The good news: The changes we must make to avoid
ultimate collapse are identical to the changes we must make to create
the world of our common dream, says David Korten.
