(Oct 16, 2014) – “There’s been a significant correction in U.S. equities and that’s shaken investor confidence,” Toby Lawson, head of futures, options and cash equities trading for Asia-Pacific at Newedge Group SA in Sydney, told Bloomberg today. “Geopolitical risks and the spread of Ebola are adding to global economic uncertainties. When the market is a state of flux, everything gets amplified,” Lawson added.
In our opinion, the above statement is a smokescreen intended to cover up both economic exploitation and the fact that financial heads do not have anything rational to say about the present dire situation. Instead, what really needs to be corrected is the accelerating inequality of wealth distribution, and not the price of financial papers.
Shrii Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, the founder of PROUT, emphasized that the two main reasons for serious economic downturns are 1) extreme concentration of the value of wealth, and 2) monetary standstill – “… money remains inert or unutilized because capitalists think that if the money is allowed to roll freely then their profits will decrease, even though it will bring relief to the common masses.”
Incidentally, Credit Suisse, a very large commercial bank, issued its annual report on wealth last Monday, on the same day that the present violently downward trend of the financial markets emerged. The report states that the world’s richest 1% own about half of the total global wealth, and that although that wealth has grown to a new record – $263 trillion, more than twice the $117 trillion calculated for 2000 – 90 per cent of the world´s population owns only 13% of it.
Among the many imbalances and disparities documented by the Swiss report, it was found that the overall wealth in the US has grown at a faster pace than incomes. The authors warned it was a trend that could lead to recession. China now has more people in the top 10% of global wealth holders than any other country except for the US and Japan, having moved into third place in the rankings thereby overtaking France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, the Guardian noted.