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Found at BBC.
Ed Balls, former financial advisor to Gordon Brown, admits that this crisis is worse than in the 1930s. He made these declarations at a Labour meeting at Yorkshire and are reported by the media as follows:
The economy is going to define our politics in this region and in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years.
These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape.
I think that this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy.
We now are seeing the realities of globalisation, though at a speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before.
The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years as it will turn out.
Also the deputy governor of the Bank of England, C. Bean, admitted in October that:
This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history.
So here is the truth. And it is the moment of truth for Capitalism as whole: globalization, extreme productivism and even more extreme consumerism, as well as totally deregulated markets were its goals. They achieved them as much as they could and now we are facing the logical conclussion.
It has been a very short lived this phase of Toyotism: just some four decades, but that's the same as my whole lifetime. It is very possible that I may die in a post-capitalist world but that new reality is yet to be created and the uncertainties are immense. In fact we are now entering in a chaotic multifurcation where maybe everything is possible: a unique moment of opportunity, the chance for human creativity and willpower to shape the future, a chance probably not seen since the late 18th century, when there was also an old regime collapsing everywhere.
Brace yourselves: it's going to be very tough, tougher than you probably ever imagined. But the window of opportunity is being opened and that is good news in itself.
2 comments:
I think that this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy
Having managed to ensure that in this crisis Britain will suffer worse than any other major state Labour like all other mainstream parties are now trying to paint themselves as a bulwark against an inevitable hypernationalist bandwagon.
I feel that Ed Balls` analysis fails to take into account that no Western country has the demographic milieu for such a dramatic political shift. Here is Gunnar Heinsohn on what really shaped the political movements of the Thirties.
" 30 per cent between 15 and 29. This means that if you take 100 males from a country, then 30 of them will be between 15 and 29.” [...]
Heinsohn emphasises that there are lots of wars and killings in history that do nor emanate from youth bulges. The Hitler movement and the Mussolini movement in the 1920s can be explained as youth bulge phenomena. The early Nazis and Fascists had an average age a bit below 30.The early Nazis and Fascists had an average age a bit below 30. The Bolshevik movement in the period around the 1917 Revolution can be described in the same way. But by the time Hitler started WWII, many German families were down to only one son. So Hitler’s attack in 1939 was not a youth bulge phenomenon. Neither was the Holocaust. The killing of the Jews was not caused by young German men wanting to take their positions, even though there are theories that make this claim."
No Western power has the young people that are the basis for such movements, especially the ones he seem to have in mind like the UK, Germany and France (Heinsohn again I'm afraid)
"France has 2 children per woman, but out of five newborns, two are already Arabic or African. In Germany 35 per cent of all newborns already have a non-German background,"
The UK is no different, most schoolchildren in London are minority. So even with a war and recession (like WW1,Thirties) far worse than they are; hypernationalism is a non-starter. That is also true for movements of the left I think.
Well, the crisis is not just hitting the West: it's global. Some of the major countries where you can foresee very dramatic epysodes are large overpopulated and poor nations like Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Indonesia... even China probably. The West is not anymore that all-encompasing. The USA has only like 5% of the global population, the wole world region of European culture, including Latin America and Russia can have something like 25% of the global population. Just like China alone.
And, well, this crisis is global: people have been pouring from all the corners of the planet into the richest areas; and not just people: all kind of merchandises and money are still circunnavigating the world every day. This, like global warming, is not something that will affect any single country alone: it will affect all countries and all regions and nearly every single individual on Earth.
And it's already happening as we type.
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