AsiaNews: A world authority not enough to tackle world’s crisis

Bernardo Cervellera, writing in AsiaNews, is wary of increasing calls for a world financial authority to stabilize the global economy:

Unless we want a world political and economic world order (like a new emperor) ruling over the (restricted) lives of ordinary people, we must make sure that any new authority (putting aside for now the question of how it could be established) is rooted in democratic and national checks and balances. The demands that many have made for governments to be placed under some form of “trusteeship” on behalf of the world’s financial system could in fact end up throttling democracy and undermining freedom.

Echoing Benedict XVI's recent comment that "the economy cannot be measured by the maximum profit but by the common good," as well as the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Cervellera says that "what is especially called for is a conversion from a (single) standard based on material profit to one centred on global human development, as suggested in ‘Caritas in veritate’." The difficulty, of course, is how to get there.