CRITICAL CONCERNS FROM EAST TO WEST
CHAPTER 43
CHALLENGING CASINO CAPITALISM A number of Asian and European governments are convinced that there has to be an effective international regulatory framework to ensure accountability and transparency on the part of capital markets and rating agencies. They feel that the absence of a regulatory framework is the primary cause of the current global financial crisis. At the crucial 15 November Summit of the leaders of twenty of the world’s most important economies in Washington, they are expected to push for greater market surveillance and oversight. Can we expect Asian and European leaders at the Washington Summit to go beyond that? Can we also expect them to call for the permanent banning of unregulated short selling of stocks and shares? Will they ask for a ban on unscrupulous trade in derivatives? Will they seek to prohibit speculation on shares, currencies and commodities? Are they prepared to propose fundamental structural changes to the international financial architecture to ensure that the prohibition of speculation remains effective? Are they ready to commit themselves to the eventual goal of eliminating casino capitalism itself, once and for all? For casino capitalism is at the root of the global financial crisis. As the author of the term, the late British academic, Susan Strange, observed some 22 years ago, “The Western financial system is rapidly coming to resemble nothing as much as a vast casino. Every day games are played in this casino that involve sums of money so large that they cannot be imagined. At night the games go on at the other side of the world. In the towering office blocks that dominate all the great
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