Is the World Economy Growing Again?

Right: World Bank Chairman Agustin Carstens

According to the Financial Times (FT), the leaders of the Group of 20 major capitalist nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, we have turned a corner. Obama, speaking to top capitalists, rallied: "Because of the bold and co-ordinated action that we took, millions of jobs have been saved or created, the decline in output has been halted, financial markets have come back to life and we stopped the crisis from spreading further to the developing world."

He could have saved himself the breath and just said, "we've won!" Capitalism and the world banking system, as the FT put it, "teetered on the brink of collapse just about a year ago." Now things are on track!

The victory, which is not yet being widely celebrated by the planets inhabitants, includes a doubling of unemployment over the last 18 months and an unofficial unemployment rate in the US of around 17% - which includes those that have given up looking and those that have settled involuntarily for part-time work.

The plummeting of the economy does seem to have been lessened. And who is responsible for this? Was it capitalism's incredible reserves? Capitalism's resurgent energy? Or was it simply the public sector stepping in with hundreds and thousands of billions of dollars?

The Financial Times Editorial today, held the title, "Picking through the Economic Wreckage - political choices will determine who bears cost of crisis." They qualified who is behind this current lessening of the downward momentum of the economy: "the expansion is taking place not at the hand of private investment but public deficits and time-buying subsidies that cannot be afforded forever." They go on to argue either the taxpayer (working class) will bear the cost of this crisis or private creditors. Well I'm not willing to put a penny on capitalism's creditors paying for the crisis.

Obama's words certainly express the immense relief at the top that the crisis has not spun out of control and led to massive uprisings on every continent. However this is not over. They still have to get the workers to pay for the massive deficits that saved the world's bank and they still have nothing to offer the world's army of unemployed.
Rob, one of America's 15 million unemployed and one of the 5 million Americans unemployed for longer than 6 months.