Opening line of an article in the International Herald Tribune, concerning the reportedly rapidly-escalating "global financial crisis". I'm no economist, and I'll readily admit that I know more about bank shots than central banks (clearly getting excited about the Raptors season already!). However, I've hung around enough neo-con, classical economist types (I'm an evangelical Christian, remember?) to understand that in reality, the major financial markets really do make the world go round. This considered, when they start to hiccup, it takes more than a paper bag to get them running smoothly again.
Now, I really think it's easy to remove ourselves from this sort of thing. I, for one, am overwhelmed by the sheer size and complexity of global financial networks, and like to think that there's a few contingents of LSE-educated ultra-braniacs sitting at the top of some skyscraper on Wall Street, miraculously maintaining the capacity to process enough facts and figures to keep USS Adam Smith afloat. However, when I think about it a bit more, I realize that more than anyone else, it's US (no, not America this time: US as PEOPLE) who dictate most of the economic turns that the world takes, including the present problems of high gas prices and severe credit shortages.
Now, this isn't the way that we usually look at it. Because part of us - in defiance of whatever small amount of reason we possess - really does keep overestimating the influence of the nerdy market analysts at Merill Lynch, or the big-talking trade secretary in the State Department. This is largely out of suspicion of those that hold more influence than we do, and in some cases, it's justified; there are plenty of decisions made within big businesses and bureaucracies that we have absolutely no influence on. However, in times of crisis, we need to consider whether the characteristic of our financial system that's made us so rich - freedom - is sneaking around and biting us in the behind.
You see, the most important dictator of what happens in the world economy is the consumer. This is especially true in an increasingly deregulated system, where socialism is being alienated more and more as the years pass. Sure, gas prices driven up by taxes, terrorists, cartels, and Katrinas, but the biggest determining factor is our seemingly unquenchable thirst for it. The same can be said about the mortgage crisis that spurred the current "global crisis": although banks were certainly stupid to delve out all of this "sub-prime" credit that people couldn't afford to pay back, why were those people - perfectly aware of their own vulnerability - grappling for it in the first place? It seems like I'm constantly coming across people who express the opinion - whether in letters to the editor, to online comment forums, to supermarket lines - that "The Man" is to blame for our woes, that our destinies are controlled by a real-world Big Brother who is not only greedy, but also at times incompetent. Although the Orwellian prophesy has embodied itself in the past, and may well emerge again, we're certainly not in such a position of helplessness where we currently stand - at least not in the West.
We need to give ourselves more credit - and I'm not talking about the Master Card variety. We have the power to change the status-quo, to cast away the institutions that we so naively hope will bring us happiness, without realizing that they can only bear our weight for so long. Although this could be interpreted in many different ways, I'm not talking about rising up and overthrowing the government, or heading down to the local subdivision project and stuffing bulldozer gas tanks with potted plants. I'm talking about changing the way that we act as individuals - realizing that the more stuff we have, the less satisfaction we're going to derive from it. Heck, if we become less parasitically attached to our "things" as individuals, maybe the banks, governments, and other structures that we place so much emphasis on will develop a bit of foresight and conviction of responsibility themselves. It all depends on whether we're willing to accept the "global economic crisis" as just one of the many symptoms of the crisis of the individual that continues to afflict us. Once the diagnosis is there, we can start working towards rebuilding ourselves.
