THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

he or she would be ruthlessly punished or even removed from office.
Only when we have resolved the next 'money question' will there be
any real chance to address the climate change and the biodiversity
extinction problems in a timely and systematic way.
So our bottom-line question here is: How can we resolve the
conflict between short-term financial interests and long-term
sustainability?
4. Monetary Instability
Michel Camdessus, the first to be elected three times as managing
director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), went on record as
describing the Mexican crisis of December 1994 as 'the first financial
crisis of the 21st century'. A total economic meltdown was avoided
only because the US on an scale 850 billion. However, after the
Mexican crash, even Mr. Camdessus did not expect the scale and
speed of the South-east Asian crisis of 1997, which dwarfed the
Mexican episode and necessitated emergency packages that made the
Mexican bail-out look puny. This was followed by the Russian crash
of 1998 and by the Brazilian crisis in early 1999. Unless precautions
are taken, there is at least a 50-50 chance that the next five to ten years
will see a dollar crisis that would amount to a global money
meltdown. Currently, the monetary crisis has spread to three
continents. Mr. Robert Rubin, the then US Secretary of Treasury,
adds: 'The number of countries experiencing difficulties at once is
something we have never seen before.'
Paul Krugman, 'the most acclaimed economist of his generation',
somberly concludes in 'Return of Depression Economics' in Foreign
affairs: 'As little as two years ago, I and most of my colleagues were
quite confident that although the world would continue to suffer
economic difficulties, those problems would not bear much
resemblance to the crisis of the 1930s.