Before anything else what we need today is a paradigm to diagnose and address the many grave global problems that face us all but are experienced differently in the various regions of the world. Because in Europe the crisis is more evident and is causing the suffering of tens of millions of people, the young especially, we must take it as reality, writes Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency.
In this article, Savio writes that the world today is undergoing a profound crisis of governability. The social and economic decline of the countries of the North (as in the South we see the emergence of new global actors) is giving rise to a reckless gambit of parties and movements that dream of a return to bygone eras. Greater participation in the process beyond simply voting must be encouraged. We need a participatory democracy in which the discussion of the common good, and not only water and nuclear power, is delegated to the people.
A key element in the crisis is the uncontrolled frenzy of finance, which is increasingly unregulated and opposed to the real economy. While trade has dropped by 15 percent worldwide, financial transactions are rising continuously, now amounting to 40 trillion dollars per day. Finance lacks any form of international regulation. The pressure from the stock markets is so intense that today the fiscal deficit is seen as more important than the social deficit.
Global Issues