say Gorik Ooms and Dave McCoy

The global financial crisis will affect hundreds of thousands of households worldwide, adding to the millions of people already living in poverty.

This crisis will affect households among the ‘top billion’ people as well – those mainly living in high-income countries. But on the whole, most of these people can rely on social protection. Social protection (or welfare or social security) is one of the key developments of modern western society, helping to provide a basic minimum standard for all. Such social protection is usually funded through some form of taxation, which also allows the fruits of economic development to be more evenly and fairly spread across society. Social protection can be seen as a defining characteristic of the modern and progressive state as well as of democratic citizenship and an essential element of a truly inclusive society.

For most of the world, life is much more precarious. Social security nets are at best patchy, if not non-existent. The effects of the financial crisis and subsequent economic recession and unemployment will be severe. Levels of absolute household poverty will rise with limited or no social security, and we can expect this to be translated into higher rates of mortality, malnutrition and disease. Read more…

Communiqués such as the one issued following last week’s G20 Summit in London are meticulously drafted in a diplomatic language all their own. It is designed, not to be understood, but to provide a warm glow of confidence that something will be done, and that this something will make everything alright for everybody – even if we can’t quite figure out what exactly it is.

Here we offer an interpretation of what the first part of the G20 communiqué really means and what it might have said before it was translated into diplomatese – what the G20 Leaders really wanted to tell the rest of us, but didn’t quite like to say in as many words…
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David Woodward

The G20 Communiqué issued yesterday recognises explicitly, in its second paragraph, that “A global crisis requires a global solution”. But at no point does it recognise any need for a global process to decide what that global solution should be. The G20 members appear determined that they, and they alone, should determine the future course of the global economy – and that it should be designed to protect their financial interests and promote their preferred economic model, with no more than token gestures towards limiting the damage to the rest of the world. Extraordinarily, they even refer to the IMF and World Bank as their international financial institutions, and proclaim that they will reform them. They are trying to seize control of the global economy; but in doing so, they are amply demonstrating why they must not be allowed to succeed.
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Last week an  international global health conference at Chatham House London, included a session on the financial crisis.  I chaired that session and I asked delegates what they wanted to ask the G20. We had a lively discussion! I have listed some of the delegates suggestions below. Rhona MacDonald

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