From Wall Street Protests to Summits in Africa,
the New Global Consensus Is Here
28 December, 2011 (By Laurence Brahm)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
movement in the United States are linked with protests from afar.
One of the most poignant moments during the movement was when
an Egyptian flag was hoisted over Wall Street. Unspoken irony and
exuberance swept like a wave through crowds at Zuccotti Park.
Protest leaders from Cairo’s Tahrir Square had joined Occupy
Wall Street.
Egyptian protestors explained to Occupy protesters how
Washington spends $1.3 billion each year supporting Egypt’s
military. The funds Mubarak used to repress human rights could
have been spent in the United States to upgrade infrastructure and
create jobs.
The Egyptians’ words struck an anti-war nerve. Zuccotti Park had
the nostalgia of 1969, but the issues run far deeper. A vast cross-
section of America has merged, and Occupy Wall Street represents
a microcosm of America.
Protestors decry unemployment, rising inequality and home
foreclosures, unprecedented since the Great Depression. Within
span of a decade, America’s financial might was exhausted by
unnecessary wars, fiscal stimulus wasted, and rewarding bailouts to
bankers gone rogue. For Americans, the Wall Street-Washington
coterie has become as much a symbol of incompetent government,
politics of oligarchy and economic squandering as Mubarak and his
military cronies are to Egyptians.
Protestors in Tahrir Square and Wall Street articulate equal
frustrations. Both have expressed outrage at an unjust order that’s
blatantly hypocritical. Declining economies, loss of jobs, poor
infrastructure, lack of trust in government, unnecessary wars and
manipulated media top their lists.
Protesters have responded by occupying public spaces, engaging in
non-violent disobedience and forming transparent ad-hoc governing
councils in open areas. They espouse issues but do not promote
personalities. They release their messages through unedited live
news streams via the Internet. The peaceful revolution has gone
global.
These protestors demand more than just a new swap of politicians.
They call for reconstructing the global financial architecture. This
requires new economic models to replace outdated ones,
fundamental policy changes and a reassessment of underlying
assumptions and values long taken for granted.
OWS are protesting against policies that endorse “greed” and call
for a new consensus. The “Washington Consensus” is a neoliberal
economic model that suggests unfettered markets will reach
equilibrium by promoting liberalization of trade, privatization and
deregulation. It was first coined in 1989 by John Williamson an
economist at the Institute for International Economics. For decades,
it’s been an unquestioned mantra, applied cookie-cutter globally by
the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury.
Under this mantra, capital markets trading debt-leveraged
instruments became the source of wealth creation. Globalization by
multinational corporations during these same years has outsourced
productivity to gain global markets, pushing stock prices up while
turning America’s once vibrant communities into ghost towns. Mass
consumerism promotes a mono-cluster of brands, stripping them of
character and identity.
Today there are calls for a new structural adjustment, not by
economic theorists, but by protesters alarmed by inequality. A new
global consensus could be emerging.
Resistance to the Washington Consensus started 15 years ago.
During the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, China refused unsolicited
advice of the World Bank, the IMF and the US Treasury and
merged planning and market to forge a mega-economy. Labeled
the “Beijing Consensus” by Joshua Cooper Ramo of Kissinger
Associates, it promotes subsidies and reforms in emerging
economies in pursuit of innovation, multilateralism, distribution of
opportunities and sustainability
Activists across the developing world have come to the realization
that standard economic measures overlook key components of
well-being and stability. Thus, new measures and programs
emerged from Asia: the Himalayan Consensus, articulated with the
father of microfinance Muhammad Yunus, and the “gross national
happiness” measure championed by Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, prime
minister of Bhutan. Three principles have emerged: protecting ethnic
diversity and local identity, achieving sustainability through local
businesses while empowering individuals through microfinance, and
giving back to the community while prioritizing environmental
protection.
Likewise, an African consensus, with a fresh approach to
development, could be seen emerging from the 2011 World Social
Forum in Dakar. Enthusiasm emerged about the role of civil society
with small-scale businesses supporting social-environmental
programs and community development. With 40 percent of African
productivity coming from the informal sector, Africans have
bypassed corrupt dysfunctional governments and failed international
aid programs. The African Commission on Human and People’s
Rights Forum, with NGO representatives from 54 African
countries, adopted the African Consensus Declaration in Gambia
on April as a fresh economic paradigm.
An Occupy Wall Street “working group” is preparing a blueprint
for an alternative economic movement, proposing the exchange of
commodities and services, creating localized sustainable businesses.
With bank and venture-capital financing limited, there’s a quest for
creative financing solutions for small local businesses, essential for
reviving communities.
Meanwhile, corporations are rethinking their role in order to
survive: Are their goals just profits, shareholder values or
management bonuses? Should how a corporation contributes to
sustainability be measured too? New corporate responsibility
schemes are being hatched and green-technology and social-
enterprise funds being launched. In the end, government must
respond with trade policies and fiscal incentives that guide
corporations toward new patterns of behavior.
Governments must re-examine their responses, too. Stimulus to
create rapid consumption does not solve economic hardship
because too much consumption is one of the problems. Stimulus
funding needs to be invested into communities, education,
upgrading infrastructure and power grids that accommodate
renewable energy, all of which will create new jobs.
Meanwhile emerging global configurations like BRIC, G-20 or G-
77, continue to shift the tectonic plates of global financial order. The
economic rise of China, India and Brazil could create a new global
financial order.
On Nov. 29, the African Consensus tabled a document called the
Global Consensus on Climate Change, backed by civil society
groups during the UN climate change talks in Durban, South Africa.
They called for three stakeholders, business, government and civil
society, to adopt self-mitigating measures to reduce greenhouse
gasses. Seeking leadership from China and India where the United
States has failed, they called for immediate action to break the
annual stalemate in UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
negotiations, by tabling a “minimum common denominator” points
that civil society and developing nations can agree upon. This could
be the face of new consensus at work.
“Consensus” is the word on the streets of Africa to America.
Nations reached a climate agreement in Durban, but real long-term
global consensus within multilateral organizations and the financial
system itself remains elusive.
One thing is clear. Global values are changing. They’re better
understood and placed in a new context. We share a multiethnic
world of rapidly diminishing resources. The values and assumptions
underlying economic formulas, the functions of our financial
architecture, must change, too.
Thanks to peaceful revolution, a new global consensus is
emerging.
Asia Sentinel
Laurence Brahm is a China-based political economist, lawyer
and author of “The Anti Globalization Breakfast Club.” He
can be reached at www.laurencebrahm.com
. Courtesy
the New Global Consensus Is Here
28 December, 2011 (By Laurence Brahm)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
- Police in New York City,
Boston, Los Angeles,
Baltimore, San Francisco
and many other American
cities may have evacuated
demonstrators of the
Occupy movement, but
that’s done little to quell the
movement in the United States are linked with protests from afar.
One of the most poignant moments during the movement was when
an Egyptian flag was hoisted over Wall Street. Unspoken irony and
exuberance swept like a wave through crowds at Zuccotti Park.
Protest leaders from Cairo’s Tahrir Square had joined Occupy
Wall Street.
Egyptian protestors explained to Occupy protesters how
Washington spends $1.3 billion each year supporting Egypt’s
military. The funds Mubarak used to repress human rights could
have been spent in the United States to upgrade infrastructure and
create jobs.
The Egyptians’ words struck an anti-war nerve. Zuccotti Park had
the nostalgia of 1969, but the issues run far deeper. A vast cross-
section of America has merged, and Occupy Wall Street represents
a microcosm of America.
Protestors decry unemployment, rising inequality and home
foreclosures, unprecedented since the Great Depression. Within
span of a decade, America’s financial might was exhausted by
unnecessary wars, fiscal stimulus wasted, and rewarding bailouts to
bankers gone rogue. For Americans, the Wall Street-Washington
coterie has become as much a symbol of incompetent government,
politics of oligarchy and economic squandering as Mubarak and his
military cronies are to Egyptians.
Protestors in Tahrir Square and Wall Street articulate equal
frustrations. Both have expressed outrage at an unjust order that’s
blatantly hypocritical. Declining economies, loss of jobs, poor
infrastructure, lack of trust in government, unnecessary wars and
manipulated media top their lists.
Protesters have responded by occupying public spaces, engaging in
non-violent disobedience and forming transparent ad-hoc governing
councils in open areas. They espouse issues but do not promote
personalities. They release their messages through unedited live
news streams via the Internet. The peaceful revolution has gone
global.
These protestors demand more than just a new swap of politicians.
They call for reconstructing the global financial architecture. This
requires new economic models to replace outdated ones,
fundamental policy changes and a reassessment of underlying
assumptions and values long taken for granted.
OWS are protesting against policies that endorse “greed” and call
for a new consensus. The “Washington Consensus” is a neoliberal
economic model that suggests unfettered markets will reach
equilibrium by promoting liberalization of trade, privatization and
deregulation. It was first coined in 1989 by John Williamson an
economist at the Institute for International Economics. For decades,
it’s been an unquestioned mantra, applied cookie-cutter globally by
the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury.
Under this mantra, capital markets trading debt-leveraged
instruments became the source of wealth creation. Globalization by
multinational corporations during these same years has outsourced
productivity to gain global markets, pushing stock prices up while
turning America’s once vibrant communities into ghost towns. Mass
consumerism promotes a mono-cluster of brands, stripping them of
character and identity.
Today there are calls for a new structural adjustment, not by
economic theorists, but by protesters alarmed by inequality. A new
global consensus could be emerging.
Resistance to the Washington Consensus started 15 years ago.
During the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, China refused unsolicited
advice of the World Bank, the IMF and the US Treasury and
merged planning and market to forge a mega-economy. Labeled
the “Beijing Consensus” by Joshua Cooper Ramo of Kissinger
Associates, it promotes subsidies and reforms in emerging
economies in pursuit of innovation, multilateralism, distribution of
opportunities and sustainability
Activists across the developing world have come to the realization
that standard economic measures overlook key components of
well-being and stability. Thus, new measures and programs
emerged from Asia: the Himalayan Consensus, articulated with the
father of microfinance Muhammad Yunus, and the “gross national
happiness” measure championed by Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, prime
minister of Bhutan. Three principles have emerged: protecting ethnic
diversity and local identity, achieving sustainability through local
businesses while empowering individuals through microfinance, and
giving back to the community while prioritizing environmental
protection.
Likewise, an African consensus, with a fresh approach to
development, could be seen emerging from the 2011 World Social
Forum in Dakar. Enthusiasm emerged about the role of civil society
with small-scale businesses supporting social-environmental
programs and community development. With 40 percent of African
productivity coming from the informal sector, Africans have
bypassed corrupt dysfunctional governments and failed international
aid programs. The African Commission on Human and People’s
Rights Forum, with NGO representatives from 54 African
countries, adopted the African Consensus Declaration in Gambia
on April as a fresh economic paradigm.
An Occupy Wall Street “working group” is preparing a blueprint
for an alternative economic movement, proposing the exchange of
commodities and services, creating localized sustainable businesses.
With bank and venture-capital financing limited, there’s a quest for
creative financing solutions for small local businesses, essential for
reviving communities.
Meanwhile, corporations are rethinking their role in order to
survive: Are their goals just profits, shareholder values or
management bonuses? Should how a corporation contributes to
sustainability be measured too? New corporate responsibility
schemes are being hatched and green-technology and social-
enterprise funds being launched. In the end, government must
respond with trade policies and fiscal incentives that guide
corporations toward new patterns of behavior.
Governments must re-examine their responses, too. Stimulus to
create rapid consumption does not solve economic hardship
because too much consumption is one of the problems. Stimulus
funding needs to be invested into communities, education,
upgrading infrastructure and power grids that accommodate
renewable energy, all of which will create new jobs.
Meanwhile emerging global configurations like BRIC, G-20 or G-
77, continue to shift the tectonic plates of global financial order. The
economic rise of China, India and Brazil could create a new global
financial order.
On Nov. 29, the African Consensus tabled a document called the
Global Consensus on Climate Change, backed by civil society
groups during the UN climate change talks in Durban, South Africa.
They called for three stakeholders, business, government and civil
society, to adopt self-mitigating measures to reduce greenhouse
gasses. Seeking leadership from China and India where the United
States has failed, they called for immediate action to break the
annual stalemate in UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
negotiations, by tabling a “minimum common denominator” points
that civil society and developing nations can agree upon. This could
be the face of new consensus at work.
“Consensus” is the word on the streets of Africa to America.
Nations reached a climate agreement in Durban, but real long-term
global consensus within multilateral organizations and the financial
system itself remains elusive.
One thing is clear. Global values are changing. They’re better
understood and placed in a new context. We share a multiethnic
world of rapidly diminishing resources. The values and assumptions
underlying economic formulas, the functions of our financial
architecture, must change, too.
Thanks to peaceful revolution, a new global consensus is
emerging.
Asia Sentinel
Laurence Brahm is a China-based political economist, lawyer
and author of “The Anti Globalization Breakfast Club.” He
can be reached at www.laurencebrahm.com
. Courtesy
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