Andrew Crook is a journalist at Australian news website Crikey.com.au and has previously written on finance for Business Spectator and on music for Mess+Noise. He spent three torturous years as a public servant before moving to the Business Spectator newsdesk. In his spare time he is attempting to finish an Honours thesis on social movements. 
andrewcrook@thecommentfactory.com
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Neither governments, nor old-style social movements, have the political or economic tools to deal with this current crisis. Global neoliberalism’s iron cage has been bent out of shape, but it is far from being broken.
All over the world people are losing jobs and protesters are fighting back. But the Left needs to be in shape to combat the allure of the far-right in these fraught economic times.
The US is witnessing a return to values of personal commitment and responsibility, after decades of rampant free-market ideology.
The G20 was apparently conceived by Bush in concert with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, but its prescriptions are old and failed exercizes in neoliberal orthodoxy.
The soft-left Obama honeymoon will last only weeks because the financial crisis will make it impossible to push through any equalizing measures. The only way serious change can be forced through is for a mobilized movement — but that doesn’t look likely.
Business journalist, Andrew Crook, says his colleagues in the financial media should stop leaving the status-quo unquestioned in the mad scramble for the next story.
The global left needs to imagine a radical new regulatory framework with actual meaning in response to the current financial crisis. So far this hasn’t happened, and it requires a broad and serious social movement to bring it about.
With a changed global economic system and cultural superstructure, American politicians need to catch up quick, for their own sake and ours.
