Introduction
An unstable world
We live in an unstable world, and the instability is going to increase. It is a world where a billion people feel hungry every day, and the hunger is going to increase. It is a world which is destroying its own environment, and the destruction is going to increase. It is a violent world, and the violence is going to increase. It is a world where people are less happy, even in the industrially advanced countries, than they used to be,1 and the unhappiness is going to increase.
Even the most craven apologists for capitalism find it hard to deny this reality any longer, as the worst economic crisis since the Second World War continues to deepen as I write.
The world's best known banks have only been saved from going bust by vast government bail-outs. Thousands of factories, stores and offices are closing across Europe and North America. Unemployment is shooting upwards. Twenty million Chinese workers have been told they have to return to the villages because there are no jobs for them in the cities. An Indian employers' think tank warns that ten million of their employees face the sack. A hundred million of the world's people in the Global South are still threatened with hunger because of last year's doubling of grain prices, while in the richest country in the world, the United States, three million families have been dispossessed from their homes in 18 months.
Yet just two years ago, when I began this book, the message was very different: "Recent high levels of growth will continue, global inflation will stay quite subdued, and global current account imbalances will gradually moderate," was the "consensus" among mainstream economists, reported the Bank of International Settlements. The politicians, industrialists, financiers and commentators all agreed. They toasted the wonders of free markets and rejoiced that "entrepreneurial genius" had been liberated from regulation. It was wonderful, they told us, that the rich were getting richer because that provided the incentives which made the system so bountiful.
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