PRAGOTI

Focus on individuals and not institutions, says ILO

Stiglitz to lead panel on financial reform

Call for coordinated global efforts

Courtesy: The Hindu

While India is not likely to face a financial meltdown of the kind that was nearly experienced in the US, the global financial crisis will certainly have an impact. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh consider the possible negative effects of the crisis on India and whether the Government’s response so far has been appropriate. Courtesy: Business Line.

The developed capitalist system, epitomized by the country privileged by nature to which European whites brought their ideas, dreams and ambitions, is today in crisis. But, it is not the usual crisis that happens once every certain number of years, or even the traumatic crisis of the 1930s; rather, the worst of all since the world started to pursue this model of growth and development.

With the global economy in tatters, the U.S. president, who was placed in that office in such an irregular and irresponsible way, has created a real predicament for all of the NATO allies and Japan, the most developed and wealthiest military, economic and technological partner of the United States in the Pacific.

The candidates of the two main parties who will decide these elections are trying to persuade the bewildered voters — many of whom have never bothered to cast a vote — that as presidential candidates, they can guarantee the well-being and consumerism of what they describe as a middle-class people, without the least intention of making real changes to what they consider to be the most perfect economic system that the world has ever known. It is the same world, of course, in the minds of each and every one of them, which is less important than the happiness of some 300 million people who account for less than five percent of the world population. The fate of the remaining 95% of humanity, war and peace, air that may be the fit to breathe or not, will depend to a great extent on the decisions of the empire’s institutional leader, whether or not that constitutional office has any real power in a period of nuclear weapons and computer-controlled space shields, in circumstances where every second counts and ethical principles are increasingly less important. Still, the more or less disastrous role played by presidents of that country cannot be overlooked.

Two reflections by Fidel Castro on the US elections and the G-7 finance ministers' meeting amidst crisis of the capitalist system and the developments around it.

Bailing out banks seems unprecedented, but the US government's form in subsidising big business is well established.

A commentary by George Monbiot (Courtesy: The Guardian)