We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Next Financial Crisis May Be Just Around the Corner

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from TeleSur.
The bottom line is that the global financial meltdown of 2008-’09 and the European debt crisis of 2010-’12 have never truly been resolved. After governments disbursed record bailouts, the world’s leading central banks simply papered over the remaining weaknesses by subsidizing essentially defunct financial institutions to the tune of trillions of dollars, buying up swaths of toxic assets and providing loans at negative real interest rates in the hope of reviving the credit system and restarting private lending.
But instead of fixing the underlying problems of structural indebtedness, record unemployment, rampant inequality and a seemingly never-ending recession, these measures have only made matters worse.