Public announcement GEAB N°29 -- Nov. 17, 2008 (LEAP/E2020) -- The G20-meeting held in Washington on November 14/15, 2008, is in its essence a historical indicator that the Western -- above all Anglo-Saxon -- monopoly on global economic and financial governance, is coming to an end.
Nevertheless, according to LEAP/E2020, this meeting also clearly demonstrated that these kinds of summits are doomed to inefficiency because they concentrate on curing the symptoms (banks’ and hedge funds’ financial difficulties, derivative markets’ explosion, financial and currency markets’ dramatic volatility, ...) rather than the fundamental root of the current crisis, i.e. the collapse of the Bretton Woods system based on the U.S. Dollar as sole pillar of the global monetary system. Without a complete overhaul of the system inherited from 1944 by summer 2009, the failing of the current system and that of the United States at the center, will lead the whole planet to an unprecedented economic, social, political and strategic instability, and more specifically to a breakdown of the global monetary system by summer 2009. In light of the technocratic jargon and calendar of the declaration released after this first G20-meeting (totally disconnected from the speed and scope of the unfolding crisis (1)), it is more than likely that the disaster will have to happen for the fundamental problems to be seriously addressed and for the beginning of a reply to be initiated.
Four key-factors are now pushing the Bretton Woods II (2) system to collapse in the course of the year 2009:
• Fast weakening of the central players: USA, UK.
• Three visions of the future of global governance will be dividing world’s largest players (United-States, Eurozone, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil) by spring 2009.
• Unbridled speeding-up of the last decade’s (de-)stabilizing processes
• Increasing number of more and more violent backlashes.
LEAP/E2020 already extensively described factors 1 and 4 in previous editions of the GEAB. Therefore we will concentrate on factors 2 and 3 in the present edition (GEAB N°29).
The agitation that has seized global leaders since the end of September 2008 indicates that panic has struck at the highest level. Worldwide political leaders have now understood that the house is on fire. But they have not yet perceived something obvious: that the very structure of the building is involved. Improving fire-regulations or reorganizing emergency services will not be sufficient. To use a strong symbolic image, the World Trade Center’s twin towers did not collapse because firemen were late or because water was missing in the automatic fire-system, they collapsed because their structure was not meant to support the shock of two airliners hitting them in just a few minutes.
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