| Volume 6, Number 4, October 2009 |
Reflections on International
Economy and Finance
by Jose I. Duarte
何塞·杜亚迪 |
Life after Bankruptcy
by Jürgen Habermas 儒根·哈贝马斯 |
IN the last months, with renewed emphasis, many have been asking the following question: will this economic and financial crisis give rise to a fundamentally new geopolitical architecture? Many think it necessary; others, inevitable; some are sceptical. Maybe we should formulate it in a slightly different way. Can we expect changes in the international system structure that will improve the coordination of the international economy and, hopefully, will reduce the likelihood of major economic and financial crises?
In trying to draft an answer to this kind of question, what are our major points of reference and the likely obstacles? Such an understanding is essential if we do not want to be mere passive observers of events that affect us all. Therefore, let’s try to identify, in relatively broad terms and as objectively as possible, how we got here and what the main elements are of the present context that we must take into account.
Before I attempt to do just that, let me make it clear that this is no more than a personal reflection...
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Thomas Assheuer: Herr Habermas, the international financial system has collapsed and a global economic crisis is looming. What do you find most worrying about this?
Jürgen Habermas: What worries me most is the scandalous social injustice that the most vulnerable social groups will have to bear the brunt of the socialised costs for the market failure. The mass of those who, in any case, are not among the winners of globalisation now have to pick up the tab for the impacts of a predictable dysfunction of the financial system on the real economy. Unlike the shareholders, they will not pay in money values but in the hard currency of their daily existence. Viewed in global terms, this avenging fate is also afflicting the economically weakest countries. That’s the political scandal. Yet pointing the finger at scapegoats strikes me as hypocritical. The speculators, too, were acting consistently within the established legal framework according to the socially recognised logic...
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| Issue 6.4 |
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World Mutation or
Epochal Challenge?
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