Opinion: (Angel Gurria, Secretary General, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)): “[Has Western capitalism failed?] My answer to this question would be no. But I also wonder whether capitalism should be answering to the prosecution.

“We failed as regulators, we failed as supervisors, we failed as corporate governance managers, we failed as risk managers, and we also failed in the allocation of roles and responsibilities for international economic organisations.

“Some international organisations saw the crisis coming. Some even managed to put out some warnings, but they did not co-ordinate their assessments, they did not speak with one strong voice.

“Thus, they were ignored in an atmosphere of great prosperity where everybody was making a lot of money and everybody thought that innovation was the name of the game – and by warning that something could go wrong, you would look like you were holding progress back.

“There was also the philosophy that markets needed to function with the least possible government intervention. But that did not mean that they could work without any intervention at all, nor did it necessarily mean that the intervention could be such a light touch that you were not able to identify risks.

“So the crisis left a dire legacy. A legacy of high unemployment, enormous fiscal deficits which we are still struggling to control, and an accumulated public debt which has already reached 100% of GDP on average in the OECD countries.

“It is very important to send clear signals of how we are going to address this debt problem without sacrificing growth and employment.

“Reforms to product and labour markets, education, innovation, green growth, competition, taxes, health – they are the things that should be the object of our primary focus in the context of a long-term strategy to restore sustained growth.

“This will create jobs and help to tackle debt.

“We also need to ‘go social’ and focus on innovative policies to protect the most vulnerable.”

My Comment: We see how a lack of understanding of social evolution, its next stage of development—a gradual unification in one global community—blinds a person, and he continues to “look into himself,” to see the previous picture of the world.
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