-  Lawrence Bloom is deputy chairman of Noble Cities and chairman of the World Economic Forum, Global Agenda Council on Urban Management. His views are his own –

The chaos generated by the meltdown of the global economic system provides environmentalists and human rights advocates with utopian opportunities to promote a new economic model, which will not only help sustain life on our planet, but actually increase its quality for many.
As world leaders search for creative solutions to restore global equilibrium, the opportunity for recognising the importance of both human and environmental capital has perhaps never been so possible or achievable.
Recognising all three types of capital: financial, environmental and human, will help us to build the equivalent of a balanced three-legged stool . Hopefully, this stool will be more stable than the current one-legged model of financial capital.
Last week the United Nations Environment Program recommended the business world use the global downturn to press ahead with green technologies that will save firms money and help save the planet. It also recommended using micro-finance loans to help developing countries provide sustainable solutions in such places as Bangladesh where small loans have allowed women entrepreneurs to install solar panels and bring electricity to 100,000 homes.
Society has been operating on the belief that if the engines of capitalism are powered to churn constantly, wealth will prevail and all of human society will benefit. But this system has served to create great income disparities by generating incredible wealth and incredible poverty, and has been the main driver in causing catastrophic environmental damage.
The unregulated, trickle-down financial policy is necessary to generate positive GDP figures, but traditionally these data do not include the cost of rainforest or biodiversity loss. Thanks to the United Nations Green Economy Initiative, and the work being undertaken by Pavan Sukhdev and his colleagues who are engaged in the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project, we can now put GDP-like values on these losses.
As a result, we are beginning to recognise that the credit crunch in the financial markets is a minnow in comparison to the credit crunch in our environment and biodiversity systems. It appears that we have been “borrowing” $2.5 trillion every year for the last 25 years without any significant compensating payback.
Over time, we may acquire the wisdom to realise that what traditional economics considers “externalities”, as if they were irrelevant, are closer to our survival needs than the creation of economic wealth. The 90 pence we pay for a litre of petrol is divided between government tax and profit for the oil company, but who picks up the tab for the damage that is done by burning the fuel in the atmosphere? We privatise profit and we socialise loss.
We need to start valuing people first, and then we will collectively begin to operate on the principle that the environment is not just another word for commodity market, but that it supports life. Valuing human capital means acknowledging that each person on this planet is entitled to fresh water, nutritious food, proper shelter, healthcare, education, justice and access to capital. This way we can release the creative potential of all of humanity. Only when we are clear on these values can we create a financial system that serves it.
The current financial credit drivers are akin to the booster rockets on a space craft. In the same way as the boosters blast the craft free of the Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull, so the current financial system has created wealth, education and freedom for 1.5 billion people. But for many - the remaining 4.5 billion - the cost has been very great and to our ecosystems it has been disastrous. The skill in a space shot is knowing when to blow the explosive bolts, releasing the boosters and continuing the mission with the second stage only. Our skill will be in jettisoning our current economic model and designing a new and more inclusive “second stage”.
What we should be talking about now at a strategic level is urgently restructuring our monetary system into a non-debt, or minimal-based debt structure using Sharia-type finance and complementary currencies with government spending money directly into circulation.
In whichever way we choose as a society to tackle the global financial crisis, we must create a system that protects and nurtures all of humanity and the environment before it is too late.
An inspirational quote attributed to a North American First Nations Chief Seattle states: “We are all connected like the blood that unites one family. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not create the web of life, but he is part of it, whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
These words written more than one hundred years ago speak directly to us today. Will we have the intelligence to listen?

- Jonathan Lash is president of the World Resources Institute. The views expressed are his own -

Much of the world’s attention is fixed on the brutal effects of the global financial crisis.
But sooner or later - sooner we hope - the global economy will rebound. Markets will recover, and stocks will rise. Nature, on the other hand, does not do bailouts. The effects of today’s greenhouse gas emissions - like those of yesterday and tomorrow - will be permanent, at least in the timescales that we care about.

They are what will shape the lives and markets of tomorrow.

My view of sustainability is very simple: what can’t be sustained won’t be. It was impossible for real estate values to continue to rise much faster than economic growth. It had to end sometime . . . and it did. When the bubble burst, the consequences were severe.

The same lesson applies to the ecological sphere. We simply cannot continue changing the chemistry of the atmosphere, through rising greenhouse gas emissions, without inviting enormous consequences. We cannot continue to increase human use of fresh water at twice the rate of population growth. Not only are there are limits on available supplies, but in many places these are reduced by climate change and pollution. Nor can we continue to create coastal dead zones, in areas where hundreds of millions of people depend on fisheries, by releasing ever more nitrogen into the surface waters of the Earth.

Since these behaviours can’t be sustained, they won’t be. The key question is whether we choose a managed transition to sustainability, or wait until the bubble bursts. That choice will have a profound effect on tomorrow’s markets.

So what is the solution, the way forward?

Nations are making vast investments in stimulus packages as they seek to retool their economies and revive productivity. It doesn’t make sense to retool twice. We need to build for, and invest in, the economy of tomorrow.

Economic recovery around the world will be driven by thousands of firms in each country making decisions about what products to make, what technologies to use, and who to hire. It is essential that these decisions incorporate the risks and opportunities presented by a carbon-and-resource constrained world. It is critical that they create jobs in building the products that will help improve lives with reduced impact on the Earth’s resources.

The financial crisis has created an enormous opportunity for change. In the United States, the Reagan era, an era of unrestrained free markets, in which government was regarded, at best, as a necessary evil, seems to have ended. In its place, there’s a demand for government to be a source of solutions and a partner in implementation, particularly in dealing with the consequences of an economy that for the most part does not value the ecosystem services that underlie our well-being.

Right now is the best opportunity I have seen in 30 years as an environmentalist to align economic, social and environmental goals.
The United States Climate Action Partnership , of which WRI is a founding member, and whose 26 corporate members include General Electric , Duke Energy, DuPont and General Motors, last week renewed and strengthened its call for the U.S. Congress to adopt a mandatory national cap and trade system to reduce current U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. The linked economic and environmental crises could have divided USCAP’s members, but instead it renewed their determination to find reasoned solutions to the climate problem.

On Inauguration Day, President Barack Obama also called for a new era of responsibility. I can’t imagine a more important place for us to reflect this call than in taking responsibility for the effects of our actions on the global environment. We have the technology to mitigate those effects, and to create a new economy.

We need to seize the moment.

- Andy Stern is the president of the Service Employees International Union. His views are his own -

We are living through the third economic revolution. The first was the agricultural revolution, and it took nearly 3,000 years. The second was the industrial revolution, which took about 300 years. This revolution is going to take 30 years. As we move from an industrial economy based in factories to a knowledge and finance economy that lives on the Internet, no generation of people has ever witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.

And this revolution is televised, it’s Googlized, it’s digitized, it’s in your face, on your screen, 24/7. It is relentless and it’s unending and it’s far from over.

The problem is this revolution is not working for the vast majority of the world’s citizens.

Despite the exponential increases in productivity and profits that have resulted from the globalization of our markets and economies, nearly half the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 per day. The richest 20 percent of the world’s people earn 86 percent of the income, consume 80 percent of the resources, and create 83 percent of the waste.

This is an unsustainable model, and we are seeing the cracks in the system each day.

It is a humbling and mind-opening moment for those whose wholesale embrace of a privatizing, deregulating, free-market-worshiping ideology has put us on the fast track to global financial collapse. Financial manipulation, greed and deregulation have led to economic havoc.

The majority of consumers have little or no spending power, and the way forward gets murkier each day. It may sound a little old fashioned, but workers of the world need a raise. If workers don’t gain greater purchasing power, we’ll never get out of this recessionary spiral.

And that means a hard look at our business models and values before it’s too late.

This is not a time for more image polishing codes, charitable activity or more conferences; it’s time for changes in reality. It is time for straight talk; for new values, new business models, new thinking, and most importantly bold action.

Ten years ago, the International Labour Organization (ILO) issued its Declaration on Fundamental Principles of Rights at Work. The United Nations (UN) Global Compact followed two years later, which more than 4,700 businesses and stakeholders have signed onto voluntarily. Their commitment? Among other things:

· Upholding the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining (Principle 3),

· The elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labor (Principle 4), and

· The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation (Principle 6).

And yet, little has changed for the workers they employ.

Despite laws that guarantee a day of rest, it is not uncommon for workers to go for months without a day off in the global security industry. Likewise, a recent survey of labor rights compliance in the supply chains of large apparel industry brands found workers subject to forced overtime on a routine basis in 94 percent of the factories surveyed. In an equal number of cases, the workers’ right to organize and bargain was not respected. In 2006 the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) found nearly 5,000 cases of workers in Asia who were fired for exercising their right to association. The list of infractions goes on and on.

The bottom line: voluntary codes are not enough. The impressive social dialogue and lofty rhetoric of recent years appears to have amounted to little more than an image airbrushing for corporations like Nike and other signatories of the UN Global Compact. And while an airbrush may sell more sweaters and products, it doesn’t lift a working family out of poverty.

For our global economy to thrive and grow again, corporations, governments, and non-state actors (like labor unions) must work together towards a system where competition is based on the quality and sustainability of goods and services provided—not by a race to lower costs at the expense of workers, the environment, and product quality. We created global trade, global finance, global corporations, but no global multi-lateral regulation, oversight or enforcement.

Too often, in the global economy, companies—not countries—are making the rules of the global economy.

To maintain a level playing field, standards and regulations must be set and enforceable by independent entities evenly across industries and up-and-down supply chains. The ILO and UN agreements are a good start, but with no external enforcement processes or grievance mechanisms, they remain toothless, and need to be updated or replaced with binding agreements that include an independent, third-party monitor vested with the power to direct a remedy.

This is not only possible; it’s been done. Union Network International (UNI) and two of the world’s largest employers in the property services industry forged such agreements in the past year. In June 2008, UNI and cleaning giant ISS signed a comprehensive compact guaranteeing the employer’s 440,000 employees the freedom to unite on the job if they so choose. They also established a jointly-managed fund aimed at monitoring and raising standards in specific markets. In December 2008, UNI forged a similar agreement with UK-based G4S, the largest private security group and the second largest private sector, multi-national employer in the world.

Improvements in employment conditions and wages negotiated by local unions after these agreements are already having a positive effect on the companies’ employees, their families, and the communities in which they live and work, as well as the property services sector overall. Such compacts, with the possibilities of comprehensive (rather than issue by issue) agreements between NGOs and corporations, offer hope in—as well as a model for—dealing with our current global economic crisis.

With the philosophy of unfettered-greed-as-king being deflated by reality, and with a new president at the helm in the United States who respects the market but does not worship it, the time is ripe for change.

We won’t reverse the worldwide financial meltdown in five short days in Davos. But what we can do—what I hope we do—is to acknowledge the failure of the free market to magically solve all of our problems, and set to work together addressing the challenges and embracing the opportunities this current economic moment holds.

- Robert Engle is the Michael Armellino Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and a Nobel Laureate. His views are his own. -

We have faced energy crises before. The last energy crisis was about running out of oil. This one is about the fear that we might not. The future health of our planet is jeopardized by the greenhouse gases emitted by our industrial society. But can we afford an expensive energy policy in this time of economic distress?

The simplest and best solution to reducing emissions is thought by most economists to be a comprehensive tax on the emission of greenhouse gases. Only in this way will individuals and businesses that avoid the tax be doing what is socially desirable. Only in this way will it become profitable to find substitute energy sources; no longer would it be necessary to subsidize alternatives. The price of oil will rise naturally when we begin to run out, but in this proposal, the price would rise before we reach the bitter end. It is only a matter of timing.

However, a tax is generally considered politically impossible and in this time of deepening recession, it is especially unpalatable. But what about the money - what happens to the money that is raised by this tax? This revenue could be divided evenly among all U.S. residents and sent out in a periodic cheque. This check could even be sent before the tax revenue was received. A substantial emission tax would generate a substantial check. This could be used for anything but might well be used to buy a more fuel efficient car, insulate a house, move closer to work or otherwise reduce the impact of the impending tax.

Because this tax would be returned to consumers, it would stimulate the economy. The sectors that might expect benefits would be automobiles, construction and real estate. These all can use good news. Because of the per capita redistribution, this would be particularly beneficial to low income groups who would pay less than an equal share of the taxes. Because the tax would reduce our consumption of oil, we would be sending fewer petrodollars abroad and instead returning it to Americans.

We already know that high oil prices induced dramatic changes in our economic behavior which had clear benefits for reduced emissions. Driving miles fell, sales of SUVs fell and the only growth areas of automobile sales were in small cars. Housing prices fell more in the distant suburbs than in the central cities, and public transportation rider ship increased. But these gains are now being reversed as the price of oil has dropped dramatically.

In order to achieve the long term climate benefits, it is necessary to insure that there is a permanent shift in the price of emissions rather than a temporary shift. Car buyers, home buyers, builders, public transportation planners and alternative energy producers will reverse their decisions and reduce their investment and research unless they are assured that oil prices will stay permanently high.

When the recession is over, it no longer makes sense to redistribute the tax revenue. Instead, the revenue could be invested in a sovereign fund, passively managed and dedicated to the major unfunded social costs of the upcoming decades – social security and Medicare. The fund should be managed by a semi-independent agency much like the Federal Reserve. This agency would monitor the progress on reduction of greenhouse gasses and recommend adjustments in the surcharge.

One policy will solve both global warming and long run fiscal deficit. Workers several decades from now will not have to be taxed so heavily to support social security and they will not have to be taxed so heavily to solve climate change. The long run risks offset. Essentially the tax on income and payroll is replaced by a tax on carbon. The tax is placed on a “bad” rather than a “good.” Today’s working generation will in part save for its own retirement out of this tax revenue.

What happens if we are wrong? Suppose the planet is able to fix itself. Suppose we find an inexpensive way to sequester carbon dioxide. Then would we have broken the economy for no good reason? The answer is that we would have stimulated the economy in the recession, saved the social security system, improved our balance of payments and increased the time until we exhaust the world’s petroleum. This is not a bad outcome.

— Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

In the first global recession of the Internet Age, budget-conscious consumers are showing they no longer have an endless appetite for every new gadget or media service.

Many users are looking to eliminate overlapping services that offer more of the same old formula entertainment in a different package or on another device.

With iPods, digital TVs, video recorders, multimedia PCs and broadband connections in many households, consumers considering their options now find a range of cost-effective online substitutes for broadcast, cable or satellite TV.

TV programming, not just short-form entertainment, is served up on video sites in markets around the globe at Google Inc’s YouTube, Daily Motion, Joost or at Hulu in the United States.

Could 2009 then be the year we seriously ask “What’s on the internet?” rather than “What’s on television?”

A study released last week by the consulting group Deloitte on media consumption habits suggests that this digital switchover may be occurring before our eyes.

The survey, completed in October, of U.S. consumers aged 14 to 75 found that a majority of consumers already see their PCs as more of an entertainment device than they do TVs.

The data is part of a five-country study of nearly 9,000 consumers that found parallel shifts toward online entertainment formats from TV, albeit with a more pronounced focus on mobile phone usage outside the US. In Brazil, consumers spend an average of 19.3 hours online for personal use versus 9.8 hours watching TV.

In the United States, three-quarters of so-called “millennials” — young consumers aged 14 to 19 raised entirely in the Internet Age — say PCs offer more entertainment than TVs.

About half of Baby Boomers agree that PCs offer more. Even a surprising 42 percent of the “Reading generation,” people aged 62 and above, see PCs as more entertaining than TVs.

U.S. “millennials” typically spend 18.8 hours a week online, nearly twice as much time as they spend on TV, the report finds.

They watch DVDs on computers for an average of almost two hours. They are nearly five times as likely to listen to music on a PC, phone or music player than to the radio, the data shows.

This all may come as news to “mature” adults — those over 62 — which the U.S. survey found watch 21.5 hours of TV per week, double the time they spend online.

But the shift has already happened, however long it may take older generations to catch up, says Ed Moran, Deloitte’s director of product innovation in New York, who led the study.

DIGITAL SUBSTITUTES

Forced to consider budgeting their once free-spending media habits, consumers may find getting better connected online to be the best way to cut their entertainment and communication costs.

Market researchers have seen a pick up over the course of the past year in switching behaviors as consumers cut back on premium movie or music packages or video rental subscription services.

For active consumers looking to watch more for less, there are abundant alternatives, albeit ones that may require several hours of battling “customer service” operators to extricate yourself from subscription traps, or in Europe, TV licensing fees.

Savvy consumers are finding “good enough” digital substitutes online that allow them to forego subscribing to pay TV or online video rental services.

That’s true already among the young, but is likely to spread among other age groups as they see the value for money.

To be be sure, only as these older generations with far greater discretionary spending power switch will the trend spell the end of older media models.

Gartner analyst Mike McGuire says young people with newer PCs are increasingly taking over the functions of programming their own media, given the amount of TV, movie and music content they can stream or download.

TV over the Internet is sneaking up on us, slowly, unlike the music revolution set in motion by online file sharing service Napster a decade ago and laid low the music industry. Internet bandwidth limitations probably limit how many can be channel surfing online at any one time.

But Broadcasters are getting into the act. In Britain, the BBC iPlayer lets Web users replay the last week of broadcast TV and radio programs and ranks as the second most popular multimedia site behind YouTube. For now, overseas users can only hear BBC radio on the iPlayer.

True, watching TV on the web will be held back until consumers can pick and choose on what device and when they see any particular program. Regulators could do more to help break down media bundling in favor of a la carte pricing that allows consumers to pick and choose what they watch while freeing up programming for the Web.

While “live TV” is still a work-in-progress on the web, a growing amount of legitimate news and entertainment is free to view, via laptops or on smaller digital TV displays hooked up to computers.

For all but the most premium film or sports content, there is a growing variety of quality online substitutes.

It’s not high-definition on a fat screen but it’s playing when you want, at a price that’s hard to beat.

– At the time of publication Eric Auchard did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. For previous columns, Reuters’ customers can click here. –

Despite the incessant drumbeat of poor economic data -- consumer confidence fell to a record low in December and the price of single-family homes plunged in October -- the majority of Americans are optimistic about what is in store in 2009.

The Marist College canvassed 1,003 Americans about their expectations for 2009 on December 9 and 10 -- days after the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed the United States had been mired in a recession since December 2007.

Expectations for a brighter future were higher among younger generations with 64 percent of those under 45 having an optimistic view compared with 52 percent for those 45 or older.

Based on last year's results, those who aim to improve their lives in 2009 will have at least partial success. In 2008, 60 percent kept their self-made promises for at least part of the year.

Are you optimistic about 2009? What resolutions will you make to improve your life in 2009?

I recently visited one of the most frightening sites on the Web—the place where I look at my shrinking retirement account.

As I calculated the investment loss since the steep decline in the markets began, and particularly since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, some questions arose (in addition to: Will I ever be able to retire?).

--Did we in the media do our job in reporting on the run-up to the crisis?

--Now that an “official” recession has been declared in the U.S. and the depth of the crisis is becoming clearer around the world, are we in the media keeping things in perspective? Should we even be using words like “crisis” or “meltdown?”

On the first question, I can’t help thinking of Claude Rains’ “Casablanca” character Captain Renault, who was “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” in Rick’s club. In hindsight, given the current state of the financial markets, wasn’t it obvious a problem was brewing?

Not necessarily. And it probably wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone reading online or print coverage or watching television news in the United States.

A look at a study by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that, in the United States, coverage of the economy was pretty much drowned out by coverage of the presidential election—at least until the two stories converged in mid-September. Indeed, as the Pew material shows, in the month preceding the week of Sept. 15, which saw the Lehman bankruptcy, the Merrill Lynch sale, the AIG bailout and large drops in share prices, the proportion of the news hole devoted to the economy reached a low for the year, filling only 4.8 percent of the time on television and radio and space in the print and online media. Since then, that focus has shifted, as the presidential campaign narrative became, again, “it’s the economy, stupid,” and as the presidential transition has focused on U.S. economic problems.

Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger is skeptical that financial journalists could have done much more to predict the depth of the crisis.

“Journalists do best when reporting what's happening and giving the news context and analysis,” he said. “We also do well when we look backwards and discuss past events from the perspective of the present. We do least well when we prognosticate. While our reporting and commentary did discuss potential weak points in the economy, we did not -- and nor frankly could we -- accurately predict the calamitous events of this year.”

Schlesinger worries, though, that there was a certain inevitability to the crisis and that the media played a role.

“I do worry about the narrative lines of reporting that contributed to the crisis,” he said. “To take just one example, much of the crisis was caused by banks taking on excess risks in the pursuit of higher profits. Yet had a major bank president stepped back from that fray and declined to participate, the ‘grammar’ of our results reporting would surely have compared that bank's results negatively against expectations and against its peers.

“That brave bank president would surely have lost at least his bonus and probably his job. The very fear of that kind of negative comparison helped spur things on -- as Citibank's ex-CEO Charles Prince said (while still in his job), ‘As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.’

“We in the media help play that music, probably exacerbating the highs on the way up and the lows on the way down.”

So did our reporting help change the tune that was being played? Did it raise questions about the factors that contributed to the crisis, including complex financial instruments, subprime mortgage lending and excessive risk?

To fully answer that would require a deeper analysis than we have room for in this space, but there is evidence that questioning notes were sounded.

As early as Aug. 18, 2003, a Reuters story quoted Fed governor Edward Gramlich citing the dangers of “predatory lending” in extending subprime credit. By 2006, the pace had accelerated. A Factiva search of Reuters News found 128 stories that mentioned the phrase “subprime mortgage” that year, including a number in which analysts predicted a deterioration in credit quality. The crescendo came in 2007, when there were more than 10,000 stories that referenced subprime mortgages and when Reuters.com built a special section to house material on the issue. That section developed into the current Crisis in Credit and Housing Market sections.

Still, the overall “music” was loud and infectious and it’s easy to understand why so many couldn’t stay off the dance floor.

Now that the crisis is here, some are accusing the media of deepening the problems. Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, a U.K. employers group and a former editor of the Financial Times, said “careless headlines or injudicious reporting risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies of a very serious nature.” He urged journalists to be especially vigilant in their fact-checking and called on the press to avoid such words as “panic,” “fear” and “chaos.”

He also suggested that journalists should cut bankers, regulators and politicians a little slack, since “precious few journalists gave any hint at all of what was about to come.”

The FT’s Lex column (Note: subscription required) accused Lambert of shooting the messenger and lamented that some would “seek to clamp down on the fourth estate…, hoping regulation will recreate a golden age when the business press was a tamer, more deferential beast” that “could be hushed up in times of financial turbulence.”

But those days are gone, as Lex put it. “The digital revolution, by lowering entry barriers and intensifying competition, has put paid to all that. It will not return.”

And good riddance. As a card-carrying lover of the First Amendment and the digital revolution, I’m happy those days are gone. But with our freedom comes a sometimes frightening responsibility, especially in troubled economic waters.

As Schlesinger says, “We have a responsibility to be careful, and most of our reporting has been very careful. But we too have played some discordant notes and we need to learn from that.”

What do you think? Did we in the media do our job in reporting on the financial crisis, both before the market collapse in September and since? Are we being careful enough not to sow panic and make things worse? How can our reporting help you weather the storm?

Please post your comments here.

I’ll be using this space regularly to explore issues arising from Reuters and other media coverage of the world and to have a discussion with you. Among the topics I plan to look at: the dangers and rewards of covering religion; the use of anonymous sources; the debate over shield laws for journalists, and much more. I’ll also be providing lots of space for you to have your say.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching that retirement account.

Dean Wright, Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards

Thirty-first U.S. President Herbert Clark Hoover once said: "Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."

Governments around the world are borrowing heavily to finance their fiscal expansion – unprecedented in size and scale – to prevent severe economic downturn.

However, outspoken independent economist Roger Nightingale thinks fiscal stimulus will not work.

He predicts a severe, Japanese-style recession to hit major and developing markets.

"There is no way out of this problem. Fiscal policy won’t help it at all," he told a conference in London.

"It’s taking from one type of people and giving it to another… It’s net zero. It’s taking from non-banks and giving to banks. It’s taking from the innocent and giving to the guilty. It’s Robin Hood in reverse."

World leaders vowed to work together in overhauling the global financial system as they headed to Washington for a summit on wresting the global economy from recession and avoiding future meltdowns.

Far from the confines of Washington, Reuters readers launched into a lively debate, sparked by Reuters columnists and experts, on what this means for the global financial crisis.

One of the more lively discussions arose from a column theorizing the financial crisis is the greatest threat to international security. Paul Rogers, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group argues:

Unless global responses are made to the current economic crisis, the biggest threat to international security will be the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people, leading to radical and violent social movements that will be met with force, resulting in still greater conflict.

Reader Jonathan Cole contends:

When the “me” impulse overcomes the “we” impulse to the point that it creates a dysfunctional, unjust concentration of wealth and comfort in the hands of a minority, while consigning the rest to poverty, bad health, and early death, it is only a matter of time before the anger bubbles up from the masses.

Reader James Harris counters:

Maybe it is time for better thinking and not these emotional reactions, that are ultimately an innate desire for finger pointing at U.S. Leadership in causing the financial crisis.

While reader Michael Anderson comments:

I think it would be very beneficial if we had leadership which could promote a mindset whereby we didn’t think of it as us versus them. When underdeveloped nations begin sharing in the wealth to a larger degree we all win.

“Move over America! Make space Europe!”

Reuters columnist Paul Taylor writes that this summit of 20 nations sets a precedent for a new international order. Emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico are invited to share responsibility for the economic fate of the planet with the established Group of Eight industrialized nations.

No longer mere appendages invited for lunch at the end of the annual G8 summit, the rising powers are in demand because they have either mountains of cash, vital natural resources, fast-growing economies or regional security responsibilities.

Reader RC comments:

India constitutes around 17% of the world population whereas the whole of Europe constitutes only around 5% of the world population. Europe have 3 permanent UN security council members with veto power, which India does not have. What kind of democratic world is this?

“Risk-taking is the engine of economic innovation”

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor puts forth the argument that the U.S. won’t stomach a new Bretton Woods. She writes:

Whatever the wisdom of more far-reaching international financial regulations, many Americans don’t want binding rules administered by a bureaucracy unaccountable to the public. They prefer to do the job themselves. They want sovereignty over their own affairs, and are suspicious of international organizations.

What are your thoughts on the issues world leaders face as they tackle the financial crisis?

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

The lessons of Japan’s stumbling path out of deflation and recession suggest that government spending can help stave off an extended recession, but it may take years not months and require an unlikely combination of political will and consensus.

That’ll be a lot of bridges to nowhere.

The particular type of recession the United States faces, a balance sheet one, means that cutting interest rates will be really pretty ineffective, and while you can throw everything you have at saving the banking system, you can’t make people and businesses borrow and put the money to work. They too have their own balance sheet problems, having loaded up on debt and holding as they are assets like real estate and stocks that have fallen in value.

Banks too are about to get whacked by another hit to their assets, as corporations respond to newly lousy economic conditions by, well, defaulting.

In short, it’s a negative self-reinforcing cycle that low interest rates do little to break and that is bigger, though related, to the problems in the financial system.

Government spending can break the cycle. Not tax cuts, which will only go to pay down debt or are saved into a banking system that isn’t working, but actual bricks and mortar. Think the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration super-sized or Japan building highways and bridges over seemingly every river, stream and rivulet.

“It was the fiscal stimulus that actually helped end the Great Depression, not the monetary policy,” said Richard Koo, Tokyo-based chief economist at Nomura Research Institute and author of The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession.

“I don’t think it will be over quickly. I am recommending at least three to five years seamless medium-term fiscal stimulus measures to give enough time for the private sector to repair its balance sheet.”

Three to five years is an eternity in political life. It is an absolute sure thing that incoming President Barack Obama will design and implement a pretty chunky fiscal stimulus package even if President Bush does not pass one in his waning days in office. But think about how difficult it will be to maintain both the will and power to maintain a huge borrow and spend program for several years.

Koo thinks that Japan, which was facing a far more serious destruction of assets, derailed its recovery with premature fiscal reform. “If we had known in advance that this kind of recession will never be over until private balance sheets are repaired and fiscal stimulus is needed to keep the economy growing, we could have done it in seven or eight years perhaps instead of 15,” he said.

NEITHER A PRIVATE BORROWER OR A LENDER WILL

Between 1998 and 2007 credit extended to the private sector in Japan dropped by about 100 trillion yen, but massive government borrowing from banks of 106 trillion yen kept money moving in the economy.

Near zero interest rates were ineffective in Japan because people and business refused to borrow, continuing to pay down debt to repair balance sheets that had been hurt badly by the fall in the value of assets like stock holdings and real estate.

Very low interest rates are needed, certainly, but what they do is to keep the banking system and debtors on life support, giving them the time they need.

Of course, resolving to borrow multiple hundreds of billions of dollars is one thing, finding someone to lend it to you can be quite another.

China approved a huge stimulus package worth 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) through 2010 to boost domestic demand. China will plough money into infrastructure and social welfare as well as other key sectors. This has raised some fears that China may become a less avid buyer of Treasuries, or even a seller.

But that ignores the fact that in both countries people will be forgoing investment or paying down debt. In other words there will be a new pool of money available domestically to finance increased government borrowing on both sides of the Pacific ocean.

“China’s fiscal stimulus will offset a fall in domestic investment more than it reduces China’s purchases of U.S. debt,” economist Brad Setser, who follows central banks at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in his blog. blogs.cfr.org/setser/

“Chinese banks that previously were lending to China’s property developers will be lending to China’s government instead. And the rise in the U.S. fiscal deficit will offset a fall in borrowing by American households and firms. As a result it won’t need to be financed as heavily by the rest of the world.”

Even so, there is no doubt that the United States remains dependent on China’s continued desire to buy and hold its debt.

But the bigger job for the U.S. will be at home. If what is needed is several years of stimulative spending, the U.S. is going to need a level of consensus and resolve that to me just doesn’t seem likely.

— At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund –