The structural imbalances in the global economy – inequality between capital-owners and wage-earners, between high finance and the real economy, between developed and developing countries, and the democratic deficit in institutions of global economic governance – constitute systemic failures of the neoliberal development model which the global crisis has exposed. These are precisely the problems that need to be resolved if we are to avoid another downturn, and shift to a truly equitable, just and sustainable development path.

Yet the G-20 response to the crisis virtually ignores these structural imbalances and instead focuses solely on issues of liquidity and regulatory failure. Nowhere in the G-20 agenda are measures to deal with the long-running decline in the income shares and living standards of the working poor who constitute the majority of the population both in the developed and underdeveloped countries.

Program area: Trade and Development Finance
Date of publication: October 2010
No. of pages: 4