At the end of 2008, Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Kin-moon painted a grim picture of the future when he said that the financial crisis – which was just beginning to have a global impact – could lead to social unrest and political instability and could exacerbate many other problems facing humanity.
The UN chief warned that “today’s financial crisis will become tomorrow’s human crisis” and that the shockwaves from the financial crash, if not handled properly, could “compound other major threats such as climate change, food insecurity and the terrible persistence of extreme poverty.”
A month later, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that “social unrest may happen in many countries – including advanced economies” if governments failed to adequately respond to the financial crisis.
In May last year, in the midst of the collapse, Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, also warned that the global economic crisis could lead to serious social upheaval. “If we do no take measures, there is a risk of a serious human and social crisis with very serious political implications,” he said.
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IT is stated that part of the problem is the failure of capitalism. Capitalism has not failed, it will continue to create wealth for those that ardently follow and use it to better their lives.
However capitalism has been handcuffed to a proven to fail socialist system that tells those that will not think for themselves that the government will look after you regardless of the cost or how we obtain the money required to do so. the only place to get that money is from those that produce wealth, capitalists who can move to places where they do not have to support those who choose not to produce the wealth.
Criminal activity is the ultimate in capitalism, it produces enormous wealth and only supports those that help it produce that wealth.
“Capitalism has not failed “
It’s interesting that its obituary was premature. Up until the last couple of months all the headlines talked about the end of capitalism, now we suddenly read about the end of socialism. Unfortunately the latter will never die but it sure is imploding quickly and capitalism will quickly fill the vacuum again.
“Criminal activity is the ultimate in capitalism; it produces enormous wealth and only supports those that help it produce that wealth.”
Evil exists. However, competitive capitalism is the best way to root out evil and squash it, Enron being a good example.
But the “chattering class” (political and economic elitist/power mongers) is what we need to give more thought to; the crony capitalism that sets in particularly between large government-regulated businesses and politicians who essentially end up in a 2-way patronage tango. That is a topic it would behoove capitalists to start articulating because we are wearing some blame that is partly deserved and needs repair.
“There are no organizations behind this response – it’s a public response,”
Except that in Greece, there are most certainly “organizations behind this response”….and it comes from the communists, the anarchists (who are really just a jackboot branch of the hard left) and the labour unions. Pretty clear where it is coming from. It is coming from the public sector and the parasites that have been riding on the back of the private sector for decades.
Capitalism seems to work best for those who already have lots of money. Well except for Lord Black.
True UV, but socialism doesn’t work, which leaves capitalism the best of our options despite its flaws. Maybe some day, when we can all agree that socialism is stupid, we will be able to move on and improve capitalism, instead spending all our time putting out socialism induced fires.
“Capitalism seems to work best for those who already have lots of money”
And even if this were true, so what? Capitalism works well for everyone since it is the main source of wealth creation.
Capitalism seems to work better when its regulated against those who would abuse it.
Seems strange though that the biggest capitalistic country in the world has to borrow capital from a large socialist/communist country.
Debt makes for strange bedfellows eh?.
Laws are of course necessary with any system but over-regulating capitalism reduces opportunities, negatively affecting employment levels, while it also increases costs, pushing up prices and negatively affecting affordability. Finding the correct balance of regulation to guarantee that standards of living would improve for all, requires working closely with finely tuned feedback mechanisms, not the series of roadblocks that socialists and progressives always attempt to use.
Good points Brian, but something went seriously wrong with Capitalism on Wall St recently like it did in the eighties and nineties and I dont think America could survive another financial meltdown. What happens when China tops buying their bonds?
UV says “Capitalism seems to work better when its regulated against those who would abuse it.
Seems strange though that the biggest capitalistic country in the world has to borrow capital from a large socialist/communist country.
Debt makes for strange bedfellows eh?.”
Not really. The “ruling class” in communist countries have always been capitalists at heart. They just don’t let it filter down to their underlings, that’s all.
Bang on John as it seems to be another thing that Capitalism and Communism have in common. I think Reagan called it the ‘trickle down’ affect.
What happened in the US is that the federal government, through its government sponsored enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, strong-armed the banks into finding “inventive ways” to provide mortgage funding to ever more people, including those that had been labeled “credit challenged” by credit rating agencies due to their poor record at paying off their debts.
Unfortunately, this came at the same time that monetary ideologists such as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, decided to lower interest rates to near zero percent, which negated all the feedback mechanisms that the housing and other markets normally used to right themselves. These very low interest rates also made it very inexpensive for speculators to borrow money with which to play the markets, and so huge market bubbles formed, and with the normal feedback mechanisms no longer in place, these huge bubbles just kept on growing ever more dangerous. Eventually the new “inventive ways” that banks had been using to provide mortgage funding to the “credit challenged”, fell apart when they remained true to their nature and did not pay off their debts in a timely fashion, and so the market bubbles began to burst.
It is just what happens and will always happen when big government gets too close to big business, and elites from both ideological camps are allowed to meddle in our markets.
Main story: “No shit?”
Who would have guessed that the EU (killing babies by the billions and screwing their brains out in happy oblivion) never figured out that they are getting old and one day someone is going to have to support them as they can no longer work. They had it all planned out and it worked like a charm UNTIL they ran up against a wall and came to realize that the only people still building large families are Muslims.
In twenty years there is going to be a lot of vacant space in Europe, North America and many other countries around the globe who believe the “Little Blue Pill” was a really great idea. Not so much as Mark Steyn has pointed out “again and again“, their countries will be gone as they fuck themselves into oblivion.
Children are “optional”.
I wish he was wrong but he is not. It’s just a matter of time unless people who care wake up and stop the lie.
My view: People will not as they continue to “have fun”. I know that and I no longer care because I’m getting old and when I pass on I won’t remember how stupid the current generation has been.
Kill every Canadian child you can through pills and abortion. Have fun.
But remember in the back of your mind that SOMETHING is seriously out of whack and needs to be fixed. Truth — we need children and we need them now. Canadian children (not imported) if we are to preserve the way of life we now enjoy and “my view” — it’s time for Canada to “fire” the “Little Blue Pill” or we, as a christian country, are going to go the way of the Dodo.
“That is all I have to say.”
Every so often a plague or a famine or a series of wars would come along to keep our ancestral populations in check. Just think of those pills as resulting in a famine if it helps you Jack, but we long ago lost any war of attrition since we are after all outnumbered several times over to begin with. As our nations change demographically they will be much more likely to split apart resulting in borders being redrawn, but that is nothing new in the world either, and it will be someone else’s problem. And with the current state of our educational systems, it will very likely be the problem of future socialist twits anyway. It is not Muslims but liberals and their multicultural relativism we have to beat if our desire is for a better future.
No argument there. I’m trying to get a discussion going here.
Apparently, I have succeeded. We’ll see how that goes.