Our world has shifted for good
By Kofi A. Annan | 28 Jan 2009
The present crisis has already led to unprecedented international co-operation. There has been co-ordinated action to protect the financial system from collapse, to try to stimulate the global economy and find new rules and structures to prevent this disaster being repeated. But while the G20 is a better and more legitimate forum than the G8, it does not go far enough to give the poor and excluded a voice. After all, they are the ones most affected by the decisions made. If we have the courage to learn the lessons of the last 18 months and put them into practice beyond the economic sphere, we can put in place new foundations to reshape our world for the better.
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- What Ails the American Economy?
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By Kevin Phillips, Barry Gewen
28 Feb 2009
Even if his pessimism doesn’t seem wholly warranted, a sense of foreboding surely is, which is why his warnings have to be taken seriously. Mr. Phillips writes that the inventors and marketers of the new financial instruments didn’t entirely understand them. An executive of Fidelity International says a panicky feeling has set in on Wall Street because no one knows where the risks really are. The finance minister of France observes that investments may have reached such a level of complexity that no one can assess them. And Charles R. Morris, in his own gloomy book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” reports that even Citigroup’s chief financial officer “did not know how to value his holdings.
- What Ails the American Economy?
-
By Kevin Phillips, Barry Gewen
28 Feb 2009
Even if his pessimism doesn’t seem wholly warranted, a sense of foreboding surely is, which is why his warnings have to be taken seriously. Mr. Phillips writes that the inventors and marketers of the new financial instruments didn’t entirely understand them. An executive of Fidelity International says a panicky feeling has set in on Wall Street because no one knows where the risks really are. The finance minister of France observes that investments may have reached such a level of complexity that no one can assess them. And Charles R. Morris, in his own gloomy book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” reports that even Citigroup’s chief financial officer “did not know how to value his holdings.