Saturday, July 17, 2010

Second half of 2010: The global system’s four single points of failure

Public announcement GEAB N°46 (June 16, 2010)

In terms of global economic governance, let’s remember that only a year ago the G20 aspired to establish a new world governance and the United States believed it would be able to organise this new system around its own priorities (3). Well, on 3rd and 4th June this year, not only Finance Ministers of the G20 countries, meeting at Busan in South Korea, couldn’t agree to the putting in place of a worldwide bank tax (an idea supported by Washington, London and Euroland), but they refused the US proposal (on its own this time) to support new plans of economic stimulation (4), passing the buck by « deciding » to let each country to do what it could, or would, taking into account the means at its disposal. We are far from the official statements of a year ago on a G20 as the new central instrument of world governance and we are, on the contrary, fully in a state of « every man for himself » that our team had anticipated in case the world leaders failed to question the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency. In fact, no one wants to play the global game under US rules (5) anymore. Lacking a new « common game », international solidarity disintegrates before our very eyes. This situation is only going to get worse in the coming months, leading to more than an uncoupling, a real political, social and budgetary desynchronization of the major economic powers of the planet leading to, in particular, tragic consequences for the players and the markets which depend on the « proper functioning » of the international system. If there really is a new phase of the synchronized economic recession (as the chart below shows), the context for each major power is now so different that there can no longer be a common response, even less so since the United States is no longer capable of imposing its leadership.

Second half of 2010: The global system’s four single points of failure

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