It is ten years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers – the high point of the financial crisis which ushered in a global recession. It was the greatest European crisis since the second world war.
What has changed?
Like so many crises before, it is the poorest who were made to pay for the financial crisis – through austerity cuts and privatisation, while the superrich continued to accumulate wealth.
Ten years later, so little has been done to control big finance, that the whole thing could happen again tomorrow.
We’ve seen the same thing repeatedly, from the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, through to the African crisis, and the south-east Asian financial crisis which spread to Russia and Brazil in the 1990s. Our financialised economy is short-term, crisis-prone and deeply unequal. As always it is the poorest who are forced to pick up the tab for the crimes of big finance.
Campaigning in the last ten years has been impressive: from UK Uncut sitting down in tax dodging high street shops, to the Occupy movement which put inequality on the front pages; from getting so close to the financial transaction tax, to our work reigning in financial speculation. We have changed the story, and we’ve begun to change policies.
But turning around thirty years of dominant economic thinking is no small matter. Politics is changing radically, and we have played an important role in this. But these changes are throwing up huge opportunities, and also very frightening threats. Both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are consequences of the financial crisis and our leaders’ inability to tackle the power of finance.
We have to keep going – to build an international economy which puts the interests of the majority of people and the planet above those of the 1%. Longtime activist and author Susan George has written on these issues for the New Statesman.
Please read and share: A decade after the Lehman Brothers’ collapse, finance remains a major risk
Join the rallies
Tomorrow, if you’re in London or Edinburgh, you can also join the rallies to call for the radical changes we so desperately need.
But more important than all that, please continue to be part of our movement.
Only through campaigning and activism can we build change things for the better. On 15 September, things changed forever. Our role – more important than ever – is to steer the future away from the dangers presented by Trump and the rise of xenophobia around the world – and towards a better world for all people and our planet.
Together, we can do it. We have to.