the 1990s and financial crises in emerging markets have increased since the 1980s in
relation to the post-war period until 1970. In the first months of 2008, we have
witnessed market instability and increasing governmental interventions with
measures to mediate this instability. The US Federal Reserve cut prime interest rates
twice in a few days in the US to try to stabilize the US and global markets.
The system has also not produced higher growth globally. Wealth based on
GDP per capita, fell from 2.7% to 1.5% between the 1960-1978 and 1979-2005
periods. The fall that occured between 1990 and 2004 is particularly revealing since
it coincides with the effects (in the 1980s) of the policies of deregulation,
privatization, and the liberalization of trade and capital movements. Growth in
output (which rose to 2.3% for 2001-2003) may be the consequence of the
liberalization that has occured over the past three decades or is the product of the
boom in American consumer debt which draws on Chinese, Japanese and German
trade surpluses. (MILANOVIC: 2005.)
Much of the world, especially the developing world, has experienced no
growth at all, or even negative growth. Sub-saharan Africa’s average real income is
below the level of the 1980s and 1990s; Latin America is about the same as in the
1980s even though many countries in the region adopted the neo-liberal policies of
the World Bank and IMF. Eastern Europe’s economic performance has clearly
steadily declined and created, as elsewhere, social reaction ranging from apathy to
unrest. Only South Asia, beginning from a low base, can be said to have improved,
as well as China and India, albeit with periods of instability.
DANIEL ALTMAN (2007) estimated that there are roughly 1 billion people in the
high-income countries; 3 billion people in countries where growth rates have been
substantially faster than in the high-income countries; and 2 billion people – some
living in middle-income countries, others in low-income countries – where growth
rates have been lower than in high-income countries.
The brutal fact is that after decades of self-conscious development
and market liberalization, the average income for the South is still only
around 15% of that of the North in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms,
and more like 5% in foreign-exchange-rate terms. Also, growth in the
South is typically much more erratic than in a typical developed country,
59