A good question and there are many answer depending on your creed. The neo liberal mantra: We are not competitive! As if that could apply for everyone simultaneously. But for them it does. Probably because the concept of cooperation is alien to them. Compete, fight, kick the other guys ribs out. Don’t help him cross the road whatever you do! Run him over so you can get across first.
Not believing in this creed personally, I would go for blaming the irresponsible self serving scrapping of regulations and the only economic system that was not only more equitable than any other (though not perfect of course), but also worked incredibly well considering.
Now, through all we have learnt of how economics actually works and not how the fiendish neo liberal crazies would like us to believe it does, the world economic order could be fixed relatively easily and relatively quickly. This however would be unwelcome to those benefiting from the mess and benefiting horrendously. While hunger, unemployment destitution have returned to many places in the European Union and very low wages for those in work all over the European Union, the infamous 1% are benefiting delightfully.
But if it is not so difficult to start putting things right why is it not happening? Why is nobody even trying? Why has no one shouted that the King has no clothes? Why has the so called Euro crisis been obfuscated and its true cause never discussed? Why has vile propaganda of a quasi racist nature taken the place of sober analysis and any attempt to see the real picture?
Here, I think the answer is very simple. Those who hold the reins of power and whose job it is to fix the mess, are the very ones who not only caused the mess (which is one of the reasons why no sober analysis is ever allowed) but also the very ones benefiting from the mess as we speak (which is another reason why sober analysis remains anathema).
Nevertheless, in a rather Marxian way, their very grand success in sucking up wealth into their own hands and away from the rest of humanity is at the root of the abject failure of their project. The world economy has stalled and will not recover unless these policies change. Consumption has been devastated. Without consumption there is no growth, in other words business fails, profits fall… aha! You will say, not for banks and the financial wizards! Not for the crazy casino world we are now living in!
Sure enough, but is this casino sustainable? Isn’t it all fundamentally parasitical on the real economy. Which is failing. When the elephant dies the parasites cannot continue to live off him. They have to find another one. But what if the whole herd dies off owing to a plague? The plague created by these banksters in the first place?
All the same I would like to end up on a more optimistic note, rather than that we all have to die first, and that is the following: History, human life, the flow of events is not linear. It never was and it never will be. As the sun rises and falls as spring follows winter, as joy succeeds sorrow and vice versa, the rhythm is cyclical. Always.
And when at Davos they even start muttering a few platitudes about the rise in inequality, even if they have no intention of doing anything about that, you know the first rays of dawn are beginning to crack the darkness of the night.