Profiting without producing: The financial crisis as an opportunity to create a world solidarity economy

The tsunami of unreal wealth that has inundated the planet is destined, for better or for worse, to ebb. All the public monies in the world put together cannot save it or cover the speculators’ losses. If the authorities should try to do so, they would flood the world with another tsunami of unreal wealth, closing a catastrophic and irrational vicious circle. If they fail to change the rules of the financial game, hyperinflation or stagflation, more wealth concentration and deeper trenches between social classes will be unavoidable.

The author envisages a conceptual movement towards comprehensive development for humankind – person and society – that should be endogenous, sustainable and based on solidarity. That, in turn, entails global economic planning, starting from the community and returning to it with complementary resources and investments at the national and regional level to support and leverage local development that is plural, concerted and harmonious. For such development to occur there is an urgent need for a new financial architecture that integrates the local level with national, continental and global levels and, in that context, re-signifies the role of the United Nations as a potentially effective institution of global governance. It is on that perspective that I offer the following proposals. They imply strategies and work to change the power correlation, which are the responsibility of social movements. He makes proposals to that effect.