Monthly e-newsletter from Focus on the Global South, India

Content summary:

The global financial crisis continues to spread rapidly across the developing world, growing from strength to strength, crippling banks, stock markets and manufacturing industries and leaving millions jobless in its wake. Ironically the creators of this crisis – neo-liberal governments both in the developed and developing world – met in Washington DC in the G20 summit this week in an attempt to ‘create history’. The summit outcome was less than historic and yielded little in terms of substantive solutions to the mounting crisis.  We carry a statement from global civil society (that was not invited to the G20 summit) that articulates some of the principles and rules that should direct an economic system that works for the people and the planet. We also carry 2 short pieces from Focus staffers on the initial impacts of the crisis in Thailand and India (for more information on Voices from the south see www.ids.ac.uk/go/financial-crisis-impact.) and the text of Professor Prabhat Patnaik’s speech at the UN.