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We must all pitch in to correct so many errors, but commencing with the most affluent. From the “top”, because the “top” has received the most aid, the “top” is the sector that has most benefited from real estate excesses and the delocalization of production.
It isn’t a problem of
This crisis was initially a financial crisis, then an economic crisis, and now a political one. And if it is not firmly addressed at the level that must prevail over all others, it will become a social crisis with very serious consequences.
The whole EU must correct itself and resume its political authority. In that regard, it is shameful that the president of our Business Organizations Association has proposed further reductions of Spain’s aid to development… and that the Madrid Savings and Loan Association plans to reduce its social programs, when this is exactly what differentiates such institutions from other banks! Now the rescued markets are holding the governments that saved them hostage… and politicians react with such incongruent measures as the cutbacks proposed by the opposition party leader, for an amount similar to a well-known Spanish banker’s recently-revealed golden parachute.
What is certain is that capital is conditioning the EU’s political decisions, sacrificing social welfare on the altar of the market. And this has occurred because the democratic values of social justice, solidarity and equality have been replaced by the laws of the market. I have been warning that this would happen for the last twenty years. Let’s now reinstate those principles!
After President Obama had been elected, in November, 2008 it was a huge error to offer Bush the leadership role in resolving the crisis since (“free market, free trade”) he passed the task on to the G-20 (the group of the richest countries) instead of seeking innovative and courageous solutions (to eliminate tax havens and set up appropriate regulations) in what could have been the commencement of a true renewal of the United Nations system, which had been cast aside at the end of the 1980s precisely by the helmsmen of neoliberalism.
Vast amounts of money were spent to rescue the same financial institutions that in a large measure caused this multiple (economic, environmental, food, ethical…) crisis, and which today instead of contributing to a final solution impose their demands on those who naively saved them from their downfall. But both have forgotten that the citizens of 2010 are not the same as those who endured their prior “bubbles”. In less time than they can imagine, citizens are now capable of decisively influencing events, and molding genuine democracies.
It is essential to dodge the final blows of the “globalizers”. The dominant powers don’t want to acknowledge that their (long, too long) time has come and that a “new beginning” is commencing, a new era in which “the Peoples …”, as the United Nations Charter predicted, will take the reins of their own destinies.
And they will do so thanks to the opportunities for distance participation afforded by modern communications technology. In a few years they will finally erect the pillars of genuine democracy at the local, national, regional and global levels.
The economies of war and speculation will be replaced by an economy of global sustainable development. Peace will be maintained and defended by forces from the United Nations, whose General Assembly will have adequate representation from civil society, and the Security Council will take on new “economic, environmental, health…” dimensions. In a few years justice at the supranational level and the appropriate regulations will be strengthened, thanks to broad popular participation led by the academic, artistic, scientific and intellectual communities, bringing transgressors and offenders to justice and finally doing away with tax havens, mafias and trafficking in arms, drugs and people.
Regional unions in Europe Africa and
We live in an exciting age in which for the first time in history citizen awareness will enable us to prevent a few from dominating the majority, imposing their undisputed plans (often even asking that we give up our lives without so much as a whimper).
Based on biased newscasts and the rumor mill (they still control the media) they seek to continue to impose by force their anachronistic formulas and their “market”.
Production has been delocalized to countries that enable them to increase their profits at minimal costs, looking the other way so as to ignore the precarious conditions of the workforce in those countries. It is essential to adopt a new economy. A new economy that will only be possible if at the international level the United Nations system has the authority and is endowed with the human, financial and technical resources required to establish the necessary equilibrium, while being prepared to deploy its forces in those cases that seriously violate human rights and rapidly coordinate international efforts to reduce, within a much broader security framework, the impact of natural disasters for which we are today totally unprepared. (We are prepared for war, with hundreds of planes, ships and submarines… but we are helpless when faced with floods, earthquakes, etc.).
The world can’t continue to play the game of those who, senselessly and blinded by greed, circulate rumors and lies to bring down stock market values so that the can buy low and sell high… All of this is speculation; prices drop and I buy; prices rise and I sell (and I launder and stash the profits in a tax haven). And in the meantime, enterprises lack the means to do business, production is confined to a few internally impoverished countries… The moment to put a stop to all of this has come. We must dodge the final blows. We must do our part to bring down this giant framework that for so long has supported male dominance in the world, and which is finally teetering on the brink.
We are aware that the future has yet to be forged. I will never tire of repeating this, because I truly believe it. It all depends on us. All of us joining hands. All of us with a single voice.
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