On economy, the environment and other stuff

The 700 billion dollar bailout bill was passed by US Congress and signed into law by still president Bush yesterday. As I watched the vote, I thought about the complexity of it all. It seems that the financial world had created a monster, much like the SkyNet self-aware computer in the Terminator movies, which was moving in unpredictable ways and for which we cannot fight. The markets have globalised without any real oversight or control. The banks have behaved irresponsibly beyond belief, motivated by the forces of competition to fight for customers in a way which has destroyed some of them and forced the taxpayers to take over others.

Nobody knows if the US economic stimulus package works or not. There are those who claim that it makes no difference, as worldwide trust in the US government is still very low. Perhaps this will change if Obama is elected president.

Whether we want this or not, the US has been a longtime leading force in the world, the only superpower in the democratic world since 1945, and in the world since 1991. However, the last eight years have seen American leadership turn sour, with the Iraq war, the Russian attack on Georgia, and the global credit crises. The US cannot have it both ways: they are either responsible leader of the world and expect to be treated like this, or they are not. For the last eight years they have not provided the kind of leadership as required, which means that there is a power vacuum, which created fear and uncertainty, which in turn brings more volatility and less prosperity.

Perhaps this economic crisis was necessary for the economy to be rebuilt using more sustainable methods. Perhaps this will be the big chance to combat the looming environmental catastrophe. Perhaps not. Perhaps it will provide distraction for enacting greedy, self-serving policies.

Talking about the environment: is not having children the most environmentally friendly thing anyone could do? I am not sure I agree with this completely, but perhaps the answer would be to promote more adoption as an eco-friendly solution to the overcrowding of the world with people. At least in Estonia, where having more (Estonian) babies is the percieved raison d’être of the Estonian state, one would probably be ostracised for making this argument.