EIR’s William Jones Reports ‘The Steady Demise of the Group of Seven’ for CGTN

FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

EIR’s William Jones Reports ‘The Steady Demise of the Group of Seven’ for CGTN

June 11, 2018 (EIRNS)—China Global Television Network (CGTN) published an op-ed under the above headline by EIR’s William Jones on June 7. Jones, in addition to being the weekly publication’s Washington Bureau chief, and is a Non-resident Senior Fellow of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. His column for CGTN’s “Opinions” is abridged here:

“Consisting of the major European nations, Canada, the U.S. and Japan, these countries represented the real powerhouse of the world economy in the 1980s when the G7 really took on its final shape. So the decisions they made became the rule of the world economy. And those decisions were not always beneficial for most of the world’s population. Indeed, many of them were downright disastrous.

“The rapid expansion of the world financial system in contrast to the stagnating physical economy, was creating a financial ‘bubble.’

“But, entranced by the faulty logic of ‘bankers’ arithmetic,’ the G7 saw as their chief goal that of maintaining the stability of that bubble, and steady payment on the interest and principal of the outstanding—and growing—debt.

“The failure of the G7 to resolve the 2008 financial blowout has given the lie to the ‘acumen’ of these seven countries in keeping the economy on an even keel. With the trillions of dollars that were spent to bail out those ‘too big to fail’ investment banks, the ‘bubble’ has simply gotten bigger....

“But the G7 no longer has the same weight it once had. The growing weight of the Asia-Pacific region, and particularly, China, has significantly reduced the clout of the G7 nations in world markets, and in world affairs....

“While the world is still operating largely in the old ‘geometry’ based on economic and political conditions prevalent during the 1980s, the underlying dynamics have radically changed. The activity of the G20 now attracts more attention than the Seven, and carries more weight.

“And other formations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS are now playing a more prominent role in the economic and political development of the world.

“While the new geometry of a world financial system better reflects the changes in the underlying relations of the world economy ... it has not yet taken its final form. The fate of mankind is no longer solely dependent on the often arbitrary, and self-interested, decisions of a small group of countries who felt themselves imbued with the power to rule the world.”