Economic calamity meets political and social turmoil
February 21st, 2009 by Jim JustThe world financial system has effectively disintegrated, and the resulting turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression.
That’s the view of some of the world’s most respected financial figures. Former Fed chairman Paul Volker says the economy falling faster than in Depression:
I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world.
Financier George Soros says the Great Depression analogy doesn’t go far enough – the current situation is more like a global version of the demise of the Soviet Union.
Michael Klare writes about a planet on the brink:
Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations — none as yet in the United States — your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you’re a gambling man or woman, it’s a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins.
Then there are climate change impacts. British economic thinker Lord Nicholas Stern warns climate change will force mass migrations, setting off mass conflict:
[W]hat we’re talking about then is extended world war.
The global economic crisis is unleashing a global political crisis. In some areas – like Sudan and Somalia – the political crises are linked to an already-changing climate.
The flash points – countries or regions that are poised to either collapse or explode – are proliferating: the Middle East -Gaza, Egypt, Turkey, Israel and its neighbors; Eastern Europe, including new members of the EU, Russia, and former components of the USSR; Africa – Egypt, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Zimbabwe; Southwest Asia – Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Thailand; Eastern Europe; Mexico.
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson sees us entering “the age of upheaval”:
Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.
Throw in climate change impacts, and the situation threatens to become an order of magnitude worse.