I do not remember witnessing this kind of global panic in my lifetime. Probably the twin towers crash generated a reaction of similar magnitude as the recent financial meltdown and recession.

Among others, a lot of well off people are going to be directly affected by the current financial crisis, hence these high decibel alarm bells. Significant market values of high profile companies have been wiped out, rich individuals who invest actively in stock market have suffered devaluation, many companies have begun to fire employees and cut costs, and as bigger companies face slowdown, their smaller suppliers face greater threat to survival. Consumers have begun to tighten spending and fears of recession giving way to depression are already stalking. Though a lot has been written and a lot is yet to be written about this turmoil, my purpose here is to draw up its deeper structural links and paint the broader picture by viewing it together with other crises facing the human society.

This global financial crisis, expected to last longer than most of us hope, joins the other four equally global and longer lasting crises that humanity has been facing since at least a few decades now. The global terrorism and inter-community conflicts. The global warming and unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. Sustaining, if not rising, levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality between and within nations. And the high levels of psychological stress that many of us bear due to modern work and life styles. These crises span all domains of human society – economic, cultural, ecological, and psychological. I will merely remind here that all these phenomena are eventually linked to the structure of the current dominant economic system that man has designed. And the political system that supports it. Let us briefly look at each of these crises in turn.

First, that the current financial meltdown and accompanying economic recession is a direct outcome of undisciplined financial transactions of the free market is not in doubt. The utterly unregulated derivatives and other speculation driven markets combined with large scale lending and borrowing choked the system to the point of no return. Even the temporary fuel and food inflation that preceded and overlapped with the general recession was at least partially due to unregulated speculation and hoarding.

Second, the widespread international terrorism is directly linked to the US-led global wars and can be traced back to its ambitions of strengthening its economic and military control of the globe. While the connection with the economic system is not direct, the desperation of America and its allies for control over global oil reserves and other natural resources did play a role in these conflicts. Control of these resources has been crucial to sustain the high growth economic activities and ultra consumerist lifestyles that are integral to the free capital market driven economies.

Third, it is now well accepted by everyone but a few self-delusory beings that the global warming and climate change is the direct consequence of human-induced rapid burning of fossil fuels. This unsustainable rate of burning has been done to meet the requirement of high growing economies and consumerist lifestyles. As the environmental externalities were not valued by the market, digging the fossil fuels, though ecologically disastrous, made economic sense. It enabled the producers to control energy and material costs and the well off consumers to enjoy the luxuries of energy intensive living like comfortable housing, private transport, and many lavish consum