Global financial crisis, shaking, shocking.

The financial meltdown has hit almost every corner of the earth and some indications are that it is only going to get worse. The recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report has predicted a frightening scenario. 60 million more people could lose their jobs by the end of 2009. That means 60 millions families are going to lose their livelihoods with people remaining mired in poverty due to falling growth rates. For those who manage to keep a job, earnings and other conditions of employment will deteriorate. It can be said that through excessive trust in the markets, businesses that focused only on profits have collapsed.
Although it happened so suddenly, but it showed that those who knew everything, understood everything, and were confident in themselves were not correct. So (despite) expertise in understanding the financial world itself, it showed that we do not have the capacity to understand those cases. The big pillars of the financial system just collapsed, and that was not realized (even) by experts weeks ago. That was a shocking part of it; people were not aware of it.
In hindsight, some are saying that the reason is extreme greed, which led to the collapse or the marketplace has been used like a gambling casino. It's no longer business; it's gambling. Another irony in the situation is that the richest people lose lots and lots of their money and wealth, but the guys who had a billion dollars still have half a billion dollars left. And once things go back to normal, they can get a billion dollars again. But the 3 billion people at the bottom have been hit the hardest because they are losing their jobs, incomes and food now that the economy is slowing down, factories are closing, jobs are being
Allas! we forgot that the financial crisis was just not the only one in 2008, it was the year of food crisis and the year of energy crisis also, when oil prices went up to $150 (a barrel) and so on. And one crisis that continued not only in 2008 but long before is the environmental crisis.
So this is a combination of these crises which are no more separate crises. In a way, they are interlinked with some connections. The interlinked crises of food, finance and climate change illustrate the weaknesses of our current economic system.
The current financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The crises that gripped the globe resulting in the growing unemployment, poverty and hunger.The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world. The financial world is, in essence, a set of markers for goods, services, and risks in the real world and when those markers are allowed to deviate too far from reality, "adjustments" must ultimately follow and crisis and panic can ensue.
We have to remember that material consumption and GDP are merely means to that end, not ends in themselves. We have to recognize, as both ancient wisdom and new psychological research tell us, that material consumption beyond real need can actually reduce well-being. We have to better understand what really does contribute to sustainable human well-being, and recognize the substantial contributions of natural and social capital, which are now the limiting factors in many countries. We have to be able to distinguish between real poverty in terms of low quality of life, and merely low monetary income.
The new model of development would be based clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being. It would use measures of progress that clearly acknowledge this goal. It would acknowledge the importance of ecological sustainability, social fairness, and real economic efficiency. Ecological sustainability implies recognizing that natural and social capital are not infinitely substitutable for built and human capital, and that real biophysical limits exist to the expansion of the market economy.
Social fairness implies recognizing that the distribution of wealth is an important determinant of social capital and quality of life. The conventional model has bought into the assumption that the best way to improve welfare is through growth in marketed consumption as measured by GDP. This focus on growth has not improved overall societal welfare and explicit attention to distribution issues is sorely needed.
The agrarian crisis is largely seen to be history, supposedly vanquished by the rising prices of agricultural goods in world trade between 2002 and mid 2008, even though farmers' incomes continue to stagnate and cultivation is still barely viable in large parts of the developing world. Because of the volumes of manufacturing exports from Asia, there is still widespread perception of shift of manufacturing jobs from North to South -- even though manufacturing employment has declined in the developing world as a whole, has barely increased in most countries of Asia and has actually declined since 1997 in what is generally accepted to be the workshop of the world, China.
In a debate in London someone asked whether China and India, newly enriched by exploiting the globalization process, would use the current crisis as opportunity to ride through the global economic tsunami that threatens to engulf everyone else and emerge stronger than the US and Europe. Some people were even sharper in saying that China and India have benefited from the crises but it produced social crisis in Asia and that could be very severe if not treated properly.
The stark reality is that the developed world must, on the whole, consume less of the world's resources and reduce its contribution to global warming absolutely. This in turn has effects on income as well. It is not immediately clear why rich countries with falling populations necessarily need to increase their GDP, and why they should not focus instead on internal redistribution and changing lifestyles, which could in fact improve the quality of life of every citizen.
The current crises is due to the wrong policies that were hitherto pursued by the so-called dominant leaders led by the United States and its allies, whose aim was to serve the corporate military establishment instead of addressing the crises as a whole. Most of the efforts of these leaders were to bailout the banks and corporate that paid huge bonuses and incentives to its executive at the expense of the taxpayers and common people. This is because the capitalist and consumerist policies pursued by these nations relied heavily on these financial institutions, corporations and Stock Exchanges.
The world has been continuously deceived by theses leaders and we have repeatedly fallen into the same trap again and again. After the disastrous eight years of Bush administration, the world is looking forward to the Barack Obama, who might either be one of the highly sophisticated among these traps or an initial source of future change. The coming months and years will provide the answer.
The current crisis is an excellent -- even unique -- opportunity to bring about such shifts in socially created aspirations and material wants, and to reorganize economic life in the developed world to be less rapacious and more sustainable. But sadly, this message is not being heard at least among the major policy makers in the core capitalist countries. In the United States, even the relatively environment-friendly Obama administration simply talks about promoting "cleaner, greener technologies" rather than altering absurd and wasteful consumption patterns.
The present economic crises do not call for a "new capitalism," but they do demand a new understanding of older ideas.There is no question that current "Northern" standards of life cannot be sustained if they were made accessible to everyone on this planet. This means that future economic growth in the developing world has to involve more equitable and sensible patterns of consumption and production
The fallacy that economic growth can lead to improved human welfare underpins the global financial crisis. Now, we need to move beyond 'growth at all costs' and reorganize the economy based on the quality of life rather than quantity of consumption, We cannot solve the impending crises with the existing leadership that is part of the problem and is more interested in igniting new conflicts, instead of solving the existing financial and existential issues that are haunting the humanity as a whole.
While criticizing the current leadership and their short sighted and arrogant policies, taking into consideration the dire consequences that we are about to face in the coming years, it is important to understand and feel the heat and see that what kind of policies can be implemented to overcome the serious challenges, because personal efforts are not enough to handle the ongoing worsening conditions and there must be government intervention to truly jump the economy forward, especially as the government exists for the people and not the other way around!
1. With the global financial collapse and the ensuing bankruptcy and shut down of many corporations and companies that resulted in job cuts and unemployment, people face growing poverty, hunger and homelessness. This consecutively results in financial and economic breakdown, social evils, crimes, chaos and civil wars. Although some major countries are are facing severe pain the country like India has just escaped from the bigger collapse by having better controlling of public distribution system and other essential and life sustaining services. But it must be ensured to have smooth distribution of basic essential items including food to all sections of the society and a check over growing population.
2. With the collapse of the neoliberal economic and financial system the country leadership must formulate and implement alternative sustainable economic policies that will ensure equitable distribution of the limited and depleting resources and ensuring environmentally compliant, agrarian economic system as a replacement to exploitative, consumerist and polluted capitalist system. This includes conversion from a financial to a humanistic economy and implementing an interest free banking system like in some muslim counties including Iran and Bangladesh. The localization of economies by building self sustaining cooperatives and ensuring self sufficiency at the grassroots level is one of the basic ingredients to ride over the crises and for building a sustainable society.
3. The great disparities and injustice between nations and resulting exploitation and oppressions has led to the conflicts and social chaos. The depleting resources and the financial collapse will further aggravate these crises. In order to prevent future conflicts and to bring justice to all nations and all strata of the society, we need a global leadership that is above narrow confines and ensure justice for all especially the oppressed and the downtrodden. Resistance, mass movements and civil disobedience have to be organized against the existing establishment representing the capitalist- corporate-military axis and their neoliberal capitalist policies. Resistance should also be organized against the arrogant imperialist foreign policies of these nations pursue and the resulting exploitation, injustice and brutality that is imposed on the people of other nations by them.
4. Addressing and implementing policies to counter the threat of climate change that has resulted in huge natural upheavals, melting glaciers, rising sea level, extinction of variety of species and depleting agricultural yield. Many of the Indian cities have banned the use of polythene which although is a late decision but will prove as a good move in years to come.