Ten Years From the Crisis: Finance Rules the World, Let’s Change the Rules

#TenYearsOn #ChangeFinance

One decade ago, on 15th September 2008, the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, marking the start of the financial crisis. Banks crashed and got bailed out with billions of taxpayer’s money. Today, 10 years after the financial crisis, the financial system remains strongly unregulated and dangerous to people, market, and society. The financial powers and institutions are behaving as if the lesson of ten years ago did not get learned at all.

The date of the 10th anniversary of the crisis, has been chosen as symbolic moment to mobilize around and provide support to the ‘Ten Years On‘ campaign, organized by Finance Watch, a coalition of civil society organizations, advocacy groups, think tanks and grassroots movements, advocating and campaigning together to ask governments to take action and change the rules of finance. 

Finance has been completely captured by private interests with the result of a profound financialization of our economy and society, and a growing capture of the public decision spaces. In parallel, this is facilitated by the progressive abdication of State’s responsibilities in addressing all the challenges which they are being faced with at social, environmental, and political level. On one side, states seem to feel inadequate or powerless to confront these challenges; on the other side, private corporations are gaining momentum building on institutional and political vacuum and people’s sense of insecurity.

Finance directly affects all sectors and aspects of people’s life. The ‘Ten Years On’ campaign website explains how finance directly and negatively influence key issues such as: water, housing, health, education, gender, inequalities, climate change, social rights and work, food and agriculture, poverty, wastage, biodiversity, infrastructure and transport, political populism, war & peace.

Governments, decision makers and regulators must prioritize and protect the interests of the citizens on the top of the interests of financial institutions and investors.

Instead of sleepwalking into another crisis, it’s time to ask politicians to take action. If you think that it’s time now  1) for finance to serve people and the planet 2) for more democracy in the financial system,  and 3) for stronger rules to prevent another crisis, then join the #10YearsOn coalition campaign  in calling on goevernments to change finance for good!

Ten years from the crisis, the coalition seeks to bring together civil society, academia & engaged citizens to push for financial reform globally. Check here all members of the coalition

Read #TenYearsOn analysis

Crisis after crisis: Why financial sector reform isnot enough, by Walden Bello, TNI Longreads, 15 September 2018

Financial Crisis 10 years on – How the response to the last crisis laid the foundations for the next by Bodo Ellmers, Eurodad, 13 September 2018

The lesson that was not learned 10 years after the crisis by Myriam Vander Stichele, SOMO, 13 Septermber 2018

How the financial lobby won the battle in Brussels by Corporate Europe Observatory, 13 September 2018

Other articles

Great recession, greater illusions by Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Inter Press Service, 11 September 2018

Scaling Up Finance for Sustainable Development by Kavaljit Singh, Research Report, September 2018

Record debt levels suggest we may be sleepwalking into the next global economic crisis, by Jesse Griffiths, ODI, 12 September 2018

For more information please visit the Ten Years On Coalition website or follow via Facebook @ChangeFinancenowand Twitter @ChangeFinance_ #TenYearsOn #ChangeFinance