90,000,000 - That is approximately the same as the number of deaths caused by World War 2 or Chattel Slavery in the Americas. It is five times the number who have died from AIDS, worldwide.


Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director of the World Bank, is urging G20 leaders to use the London summit in less than a fortnight's time to help protect the developing world against the worst effects of the financial crisis.

"We have to look at the impact of this on low income countries. Otherwise, without wanting to sound alarmist, social unrest and political crisis could be the result. It's in the self-interest of everyone to prevent that," she told the Observer

Her stark warning came as a new report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) said the collapse of the global economy would cost 90 million lives, lead to an increase to nearly a billion in the number of people going hungry and cost developing countries $750bn in lost growth.

"Tens of millions of people will be forced back below the poverty line. There will be irreversible effects on the very poorest," said Simon Maxwell, the ODI's director.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/22/g20-global-economy

The most astonishing thing is that the "left" press article that this is embedded in is actually entitled: G20 warned unrest will sweep globe

"Unrest"? My, that is a serious problem...

Astonishing, yes. "Unrest will sweep globe" - can't all those people just die quietly and not bother us?

How does the World Bank know that which the people on the so-called-Left-such-as-it-is are still denying?

This is the globalization chickens coming home to roost. Since the end of the Soviet Union, the IMF, the World Bank, and other powerful international organizations and banks have been forcing "integration" into the "new" global economy. Practically, what that has meant is the privatization of the state sector, emphasis on export manufacturing and commodity production, the elimination of protective tariffs, the reduction of subsidies for local agriculture and other necessities, the decrease of government employment, and an almost total dependence on foreign capital. In turn, this has created the third great exodus from the countryside to the cities, the elimination of much of the rural safety valve (the villages) which provided some social cushion in hard times, and a foreign exchange based economy in which necessities (food and fuel) are imported and survival itself is contingent on growth.

Now, consider what happens in a recession of this scale. Exports dry up (as they have), commodity prices fall (as they have), but there is no possible way to do without imported food, fuel and other necessities, thus creating a foreign exchange crisis almost regardless of the specific character or policy of the national governments involved. Moreover, those governments mostly don't have the wherewithal to act independently to ameliorate the crisis. According to the World Bank, two thirds of the roughly 120 "emerging countries" don't have the reserves to support independent "stimulus" or "relief". Neither does "foreign aid" get to their populations. The World Bank further reports that half of all "aid" is never even converted to local currencies - so critical is the foreign exchange crisis. The UN reports that there is an over production of food worldwide (though at very high prices, at the moment), but it is matched by critical local shortages that are already at crisis levels. Just as in the Great Depression, food rots while people starve.

Meanwhile, any possible engine for "recovery" is now exclusively dependent on foreign capital investment and that has already dried up:


"Although no low income countries are members of the G20, the crisis will have severe and real consequences for them, with net private capital flows to emerging markets forecast to fall from $929bn in 2007 to $165bn in 2009."
http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2009/02/26/7085.aspx

It is "one step forward, five steps back", while standing only three steps in front of a cliff.

So, people start dying... starting with children... stacked up like chord wood.

Of course, you could ask them to die quietly.

Don't want none of that "blowback"...

I wasn't able to open that link, anax. Perhaps a problem on my end??

I wasn't able to open that link, anax. Perhaps a problem on my end??


Try this:

http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2009/02/26/7085.aspx

It got crunched because I copied it back from DU.