A global crisis in the making?

Day by day, the number of countries affected by the economic crisis keeps increasing. Starting in Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia, the crisis has since ensnared Japan, Hong Kong and now Russia. Fear of the contagion has already spread to India, the United States and Europe.

In brief, the world is moving toward a global recession. One after another, countries are sliding into crisis. Those who believe in the domino theory are convinced that many more economies are headed toward collapse.

When the crisis first started pounding Asia a year ago, experts sneered at what was known as "Asian values". They suggested that the three-decade-long Asian economic miracle was caused not so much by the presence of a certain new paradigm in the region, but because of a pseudo-economy -- an economy that appeared healthy and robust on the surface, but that actually was euphoria-dependent. When the euphoria came to an end, all the artificial superior values collapsed.

The most important thing that created the euphoria in Asian economies was the practice of collusion between power holders and entrepreneurs. But the latest international developments point to yet another interesting aspect: Economic deviations occurring in one country or region have an effect on other regions. Since the world economy has grown to become a global entity, the domino effect becomes valid.

The current global crisis has made us all aware of the fact that "globalism" has become a new tenet. Economic practices or canons that countries claim to have the right to adopt exclusively, and are not be condemned by anyone else, no longer exist. Globalism demands that any one country can police any another, and conversely must be willing to be policed by another. This means that practices such as corruption, collusion and nepotism must be abandoned.

-- Media Indonesia, Jakarta