Bernanke's helicopter drops are not enough

Fundamental changes not only in the global economic and financial situation but also in the global strategic and security situation are vital. As a single superpower, the United States is already well along the road to self-destruction.

Those - mainly Americans - who brought about financial and economic disaster for the United States also undermined its single superpower status. The United States - and its closest allies - need to face up to this and to the very real prospect that the dominance the United States had after World War II will never return.

At the same time, the Administration in Washington needs not only to acknowledge America’s changed status but also to draw on the enormous resilience and resourcefulness of the American people to help them - and us - to achieve a lasting global recovery. Other countries must be drawn into this effort.

We hope the European Union can hold together. To the extent that it can and can give impetus to a new and more realistic “globalisation” that will be of enormous value. We must hope too that Asia, Latin America and Africa will have a more influential role than in the past - both in devising effective economic and financial arrangements and in ensuring global security. The BRIC countries - to whom so much power has recently been passing - would seem likely to be less subordinate and more equal partners in the quest for prosperity and security than they were in the past.

This is not to underestimate the magnitude of the emergency and the task of rehabilitation that confronts us. Rather is it to emphasise the longer-term and more fundamental objectives of relief and rehabilitation we now have. We need “helicopter drops”, but they must be of kinds that do not merely attempt to raise the undeserving dead. Instead, they must bring succour to the living; but, even so, helicopter drops, in the short or the long term, will be not nearly enough.

In that context, the present Administration in Washington and the one which will take office in January 2009 might reflect on what happened to Emperor Bokassa and the Central African Empire. The masses rejoiced for a moment as Bokassa showered them with fancied riches; but the “feel good” factor didn’t last. The Central African Empire soon dissolved; and Bokassa himself quickly became only a vaguely remembered, trivial footnote in human history.

He is no longer with us but, if he were, he would no doubt agree that helicopter drops have their overnight virtues but also their severe limitations in the many tomorrows yet to come.