Skewed Priorities

Think you're hit hard by the current economic meltdown? Those across the globe, suffering under neoliberal trade policies, IMF/World Bank "restructuring," and soaring food prices are welcoming us to the party. Not surprisingly, as bailouts in astronomical figures are thrown about by elites at home and abroad to rescue the global financial sector, the worst-off among us get nothing. A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies finds that "the approximately $4.1 trillion that the United States and European governments have committed to rescue financial firms is 40 times the money they’re spending to fight climate and poverty crises in the developing world." Seeing as how the West is directly implicated as a causative agent in these countries' climate and poverty crises, such funding would hardly be charity.

Link to full report here.