At the beginning of 2020, the world is frozen in uncertainty: political cataclysms, environmental problems, and increased violence and terrorism. Most importantly, the world has no strategy or understanding of which way to go. More than one prominent economist and scholar is now voicing predictions of economic crisis.
In 2008, the world was on the verge of collapse. Then the financial bubble in the U.S. mortgage market almost blew up the global economic system. The financial disaster was averted only by unprecedented measures taken by the Federal Reserve System.
In his work Crashed, historian Professor Adam Toze sheds light on the darker moments of the 2008 financial crisis. He reveals how a small elite decided to inject trillions of dollars into the American banking system to prevent a crisis that would have been worse than the Great Depression of 1929. Mikhail Khazin paints a similar picture in his new book “Memories of the Future. Ideas of the Modern Economy.
Since the 2008 crisis, liberal elites have used financial juggling to control the world economy. It deliberately manipulates markets, consumers, interest rates, financial institutions, and the media in order to maintain its power and maintain the current economic paradigm that provides it with a constant flow of capital.
So what has changed in the last decade? The economic system seems safer than before. Not because the system has become more stable, but rather because it is more controllable. Capitalism has become cannibalism with a limited elite that has consolidated its dominance at the top of the food chain.
What happens beneath the visible surface of world processes is the inevitable intensification of our selfishness. The human ego is a natural energy that fuels the fusion of wealth and power into unbridled power. However, this is only one side of the process.
Humanity is developing in two parallel and opposite directions. Along with the ever-growing ego, there is a much less visible axis of global interdependence that gradually connects all people and social systems on earth.
People are trapped in the selfish axis and suffer from global myopia. And the nature of human development requires that they step with two feet: one foot would move on the selfish axis necessary for our growth, and the other toward a sense of mutual connection among us all. Just as man walks with two feet, civilization must properly combine and balance the ego to direct it toward a healthy and positive development for all.
The global economy is nothing more than a reflection of the relationships between all people. Therefore, we must first balance our relationship as parts of a single system that share a common destiny. When we start doing this, we will rebuild all of our management systems, including economic and financial.
If we do not make it our free choice, the balancing forces of nature will force us to do it their way. Ecosystem shocks, natural disasters, or the depletion of energy sources are examples of scenarios that will require painful societal changes.
Ultimately, the twenties of the twenty-first century will echo in us the frustration and helplessness that will lead civilization to question the meaning of human existence and the desire to build another society.
