2009/03/22

What's up, doc? (2nd episode)

"The talks may seem high-minded and maybe even irrelevant to the person in the street: nothing could be farther from the truth. This summit has to start to lay a creative map for the world ahead.

Past economic collapses have one particularly unfortunate consequence - they often end in conflict, in war. It would be welcome if this time, human beings could crack that model."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7907780.stm

Yes, you got it. I want to talk about G20 summit from London (April 2nd), the summit that I'm waiting for since "What's up, doc?" article. At that time I was mad that the 20 leaders don't work fast enough, they don't really know what to do and they just... wait.

Their meetings and discussions may not be relevant for my income or others' income, but I'm afraid that those leaders will forget some really important things in this process of getting the world out of the financial crisis. Maybe you heard the nonprofit joke/story with those babies thrown into the river. The conclusion of the story is that it is better to catch the one who throws the babies into the water than to wait
for babies on the river and save them.

I'm afraid that while these leaders will look for "the babies killer" and build strategies to prevent any other incident like this one, the same leaders will forget about the babies who are already into the water or about the river which is strongly polluted. In other words, they might forget about the global poverty which is getting worse, the environment which is dirtier and dirtier, about the resources which are less and less, and about the constant human need for inventing and re-inventing itself.

On the other side, I like the new attitude which seems to be the opposite of the one from '20s-'30s crisis. At least, it seems like the EU countries are decided to fight against national protectionism and they suggest that the financial crisis must be solved through global plans based on trust and cooperation. Now, they can "talk" this, but they can "walk" it differently. I hope and believe that they cannot do it in another way - they have to stay globally.

USA, France and East Asia don't really agree the previous idea and they took some actions and established some protectionist rules. But even so, how many "global" consumers will change their habits/tastes only to support the national economy? I know that it's not everything about consuming, that it is also about imports, exports, production, etc. But still I do not think that we can stop the globalization, as it is already "on the street", and it's working not only for countries, governments and companies, but also for individuals. What will "they"(the powerful leaders) do? They will cut the Internet? They will take our phones? They will stop the TV channels? They will destroy the planes? They will close the borders? They will increase the prices for all these "networking" and "communication" global services?

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