The world media and governments being consumed with an economic crisis of epic
proportions - "The most tumultuous times on record in the global financial
markets", according to the BBC - the 25th annual World Food Day on October 16
received little attention or governmental fanfare.
There is hardly any disagreement that Wall Street's woes are man-made.
Regardless of what terminology one wishes to apply - miscalculations, greed, or
wholesale failure in the US capitalist system, rooted in the economic
philosophies of Milton Friedman and his ultra laissez-faire approach - the fact
is the US economic crisis is not a fleeting phenomenon and no quick fixes are
to provide a magic remedy.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in an interview with Fox
Business Network, expressed regrets, unusual from any top US official, for
economic "mistakes", which are promising a global recession for years to come.
"We're not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people,
different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market
discipline that got us here." However, he promised that the US "will mitigate
the impact on the real economy and we'll get this financial system working
again".
There is no reason to doubt Mr Paulson's commitment to the financial system. In
fact, when it's the rich and powerful, whose wealth and influence are at stake,
the US government, if not most world governments, hold true to their word.
While the International Monetary Fund for many years has called governments in
Asia, Africa and South America to task for any slight intervention in their
country's economies - for a free-market economy has to be entirely free in
order for the checks and balances to deal with whatever crisis at hand, they
were told - the Bush administration and leading Western powers moved with no
hesitation to nationalize some of the largest institutions in their own
markets.
Like China's capitalism operating under communist symbols, the US, the UK and
others are becoming increasingly socialist under capitalist symbols. Of course,
it's not socialism for the downtrodden, but corporate welfare in its most stark
manifestations.
Consider the size of the entire US gross domestic product (GDP) for 2007 -
$13,800 billion - to appreciate the awesomeness of the US rescue package of
$700 billion. Still, in the UK the percentage is much higher as the country's
GDP for 2007 was estimated at $2,457 billion while the government's rescue
package is $680 billion.
A more astonishing number: the rescue package for the entire Eurozone is
estimated at $1,370 billion. Conventional wisdom, as presented by almost every
financial expert on most media outlets, states that such lofty numbers are
simply a reflection of the scale of the crisis at hand. In fact, some argue
that the George W Bush administration's greatest fault is only intervening too
little too late, by failing to nationalizing Lehman Bros as it did Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac.
It's rather ironic that those who cried foul every time a Third World
government dared intervene in their national economy - even if to guarantee the
welfare of the poorest segments of society - said nothing as the US, the UK and
others defied every rule in the free market economy, long championed by
neo-liberal economists. Even leading US republicans who chastised Big
Government at every turn - especially to block welfare programs that mostly
benefit the poor - cheered the government on as it moved to bail out the rich,
who, as usual, are likely to remain unaccountable for risking the retirement
funds and life savings of millions of Americans.
A dominant argument to justify governments' behavior is, yet again, the
trickle-down effect: a term coined by a Ronald Reagan speechwriter, which
simply means that what is good for the rich is, eventually, good for the poor.
While elites in every society eagerly infuse such "Reaganomics" at every turn,
the world poor are yet to feel the trickles, which poses an interesting
question: why the unprecedented and historic urgency to bailout the rich (for
the sake of the poor, at an imaginary point in the future), while the poor can
easily be saved, without such roundabouts plans?
The fact is that neither America's poor nor Africa's poor are on the minds of
European leaders, nor on those of the Bush administration as their high
officials continue to hold anxious meetings and offer most generous rescue
packages. If indeed it's the plight of humanity that is worrying these
governments, then maybe they should consider the following: according to Oxfam,
UK, the "number of hungry people now stands at 967 million. And around 24,000
people die daily of hunger-related causes. Around 2.7 billion people live on
less than ฃ1 (US$1.74) a day; up to 80% of this income goes on food."
Care International's calculations are equally bleak that 220 million people of
the number above are on the brink of starvation.
According to Oxfam, the main reasons for world poverty are also manmade:
"biofuel policies, high fuel prices, growing global demand, unfair world trade
rules and climate change." Long before the Wall Street financial crisis, there
existed a much more dangerous crisis, the world food crisis. The latter is much
more consequential for it affects the very lives, not simply the standard of
living, of many millions around the world.
Barbara Stocking wrote in the New Statesman, "According to the latest figures,
the food crisis has resulted in an extra 119 million malnourished people,
bringing the total to almost one billion - nearly one in seven people now goes
hungry. This is hunger on so vast a scale that it is difficult to understand
how the world arrived at this point."
It's very telling that trillions have already been spent to patch up world
leading financial institutions, while out of the comparatively small sum of
$12.3 billion pledged in Rome this year to offset the food crisis, only $1
billion has been delivered. The hope that at least extreme poverty can be
eradicated by the end of 2015 - as stipulated in the UN's Millennium
Development Goals - seem as unrealistic as ever, not due to lack of resources,
but lack of true concern for the world's poor.
Whether the American, European or any other government-infused bailout packages
rectify the financial crisis or not, the chances are that October 16, 2009 will
carry similarly devastating news about the plight of the world's poor, which is
likely to remain at that, mere "news" that require little action, if any at
all.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and
journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada:
A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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