Read Online Money Politics, Globalisation, and Crisis: The Case of Thailand RTF
Eight years before the Global Financial Crisis began in 2007 through greed, mismanagement and indifference, John Laird wrote in Money Politics, Globalisation, and Crisis: The case of Thailand that the whole global economy was basically unsustainable and would fail unless far-reaching measures were taken to put it on a sustainable path. By the year 2013, five years into the Global Financial Crisis, the solutions on how to create a sustainable and equitable global economic system still elude us, held back by old ideological thinking, vested interests and political deceit. Money Politics, Globalisation, and Crisis: The case of Thailand was written in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis which was triggered in Thailand in 1997, and the proposals contained in this book arose from the primary principle that the stability of the global ecology must be paramount, and all economic activities -- including those of the global financial system -- must adapt to that principle. Many of the issues raised by the book in 2000 are still awaiting sustainable answers today.The Crisis . . .The Asian Crash of 97, environmental destruction, social disintegration, the poverty gap, political corruption and mismanagement . . .The symptoms of global economics gone wrong.Few economists forecast the Crash of 97, and few now acknowledge that current economic practice is contributing to a crisis that will ultimately destabilise both the world's ecology and economy.The Causes . . .Economics in the 90s relentlessly pursued growth over stability.The drive for profit through ever-increasing consumption and exploitation has become an end in itself, displacing the notion of quality of life as the end goal of economics.Nowhere is this more apparent than in Thailand.The free-market economy has failed substantially to reduce poverty. Inequality increases, spurred on by market liberalisation.But, in post-Crash Thailand -- as demonstrated in the country's first senate election -- it's back to vote buying, money politics, and corruption as usual. What, if anything, can Thailand's new constitution do?As the semblance of recovery was taking place, would Thailand again follow the same path into the abyss? Could status-hungry Thais pause long enough to question what quality of life really means?The Cures . . .Following the collapse of the WTO's "Millennium Round" of negotiations in December 1999, and continuing demonstrations at meetings of the IMF and World Bank in the following months, globalisation calls for a new approach to economics -- one that de-emphasises consumption, and creates the means to remedy the serious threats to the global ecology.
