A month after the announcement of the US bailout plan (soon thereafter followed by many other bailout plans across the globe), the effects of the global financial crisis continues to knock at the door of the policy makers at the World Bank, the IMF, and other international lenders and financial centers.
What's sad is that in a world where more than a Billion people live in extreme poverty (less than $1 a day), the decisions of rich governments and lending institutions have driven an additional 20 million people into poverty (according to the World Bank...see the article here.)
With all the complexities in the domestic financial market, I can't help but wonder how the millions of people that all of a sudden can't buy as much flour or rice or milk are feeling. As an educated person with lots of resources and access to information, I could get in on the discussions, learn the technical jargon, and perhaps even evaluate some of the policy decisions and gripe about how things should have gone differently...if I wanted to. I am not a financial expert and don't dawdle in the realm of Wall Street, but I could if I so desired. What about the rising generation of poverty-ridden (and probably malnourished, illiterate, and disease-ridden) individuals that don't have even the option to inform themselves or even comment on the causes of their condition. Do they know why poverty hit them? I guess that would assume that WE know what even causes poverty in the first place. I just lament the situation in which intellectuals theorize about and discuss the financial crisis while millions of innocent victims of their decision are forced to strategize how to survive it.
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