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

Marcos Arruda
March 2009

Increasingly centered on and subordinated to the financial sector, the global economy, based on the myth of "infinite" growth and resource exploitation, has come up against serious limits. New forms of development which put people at the center, rather than profit, urgently need addressing.

Underneath a veneer of "prosperity" the majority of the world's population lives in conditions of permanent insecurity or crisis. This paper focuses on the key manifestations of the global financial crisis, briefly examines its immediate causes as well as its deeper systemic factors, then advances a key proposal: things can be done differently if we choose to see the crisis as an opportunity for profound socio-economic, political and cultural change, and decide to act accordingly.

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Contents

I.   Crisis in Capitalist Finance: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

  • The roots of the financial crisis
  • Profiting without producing
  • Speculation
  • Crisis of insolvency and corporatocracy
  • Crisis of confidence
  • Intensifying trend towards monopoly

II.  Trends

III. Alternatives

  • At the national level
  • At the international level

IV. Gross National Happiness (GNH): towards another development

Bibliography

Marcos Arruda

Director of Políticas Alternativas Para o Cone Sul (PACS)

Arruda is an economist and veteran popular educator, who has worked closely with Brazilian labour and co-operative movements for many years.

Arruda has served as an advisor to local governments and the Workers' Party (PT) in his region, and is an animator for the virtual Workshop on a Socio-Economy of Solidarity from the Alliance for a United and Responsible World.

He is also active in the Brazilian Network for the Integration of the Peoples working on issues related to NAFTA, Mercosur, Free Trade Area of the Americas and the World Trade Organisation. He is involved with the Brazilian network on Multilateral Financial Institutions and is a co-ordinator of the Brazilian Jubilee 2000 Campaign.

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