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.

Profiting Without Producing.doc

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, co-operatives and solidarity economy movements for many years. Arruda has served as an advisor to local governments and as visiting professor in universities in Brazil and abroad. He is a facilitator for the Gaia Education Program and is active in the Ecovillage and the Transition Towns movements. He is also active in the Jubilee South Network, working on issues related to the debt crisis and alternatives, economy and ecology, public budget management and socio-economic development planning.