The legitimacy of the financial system and state capitalism

The global financial crisis (GFC) is but one of several interlocking crises facing the world today. The direst in the short term is the food crisis, which has left a billion people facing severe malnourish-ment and even starvation. The United Nations World Food Program announced recently that it would slash food aid operations in places like Rwanda and Ethiopia because of the fiscal crisis, which has cut back the pledges of donor countries by an estimated 20-25 per cent. And this is at a time when food prices and unemployment are once again on the rise and remittances are declining. For years food crises have been seriously exacerbated by financial speculation, increasingly with the rapid growth of the financial sector and its shenanigans in recent times. The more severe crisis in the long term is environmental, which is also closely related to the financial crisis. A group of researchers at MIT recently released what has been described as the most comprehensive modelling of the environmental crisis to date. Their conclusions are shattering, suggesting that the situation is probably twice as dire as was predicted by the Stern Report, which is widely seen as the gold standard. These latest findings indicate that, unless immediate action is taken to address climate change, there won’t be another crisis to talk about.