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	This is a global crisis, many low-income countries feel they have been left out of the equation by Reuters & agencies   July 2009   World Bank warns of growing risks in poor countries. (Reuters)   The global economic crisis will have a "disastrous" impact on health and school projects in the developing world unless rich nations spend a tiny fraction of stimulus measures to help the poor, a World Bank official said.   Marwan Muasher, the World Bank"s senior vice president for external affairs, said that although there were some signs in global markets the economic meltdown might be bottoming out poor nations were now starting to feel the worst of the crisis.   "Poor countries have been hit hard by a crisis that is not of their making and they don"t have the fiscal space to deal with it because it comes hard on the heels of a severe food and energy crisis," he told Reuters in a recent interview. Muasher said the crisis had pushed at least 90 million more people into poverty worldwide, most of them in the developing world, and that at least 30 million jobs had been lost.   "This is a global crisis and it requires global solutions but many African countries and many low-income countries feel they have been left out of the equation. The social aspect of the crisis has been largely ignored."   Muasher, a Jordanian who served as foreign minister and deputy prime minister before joining the Washington-based body, repeated a World Bank call on rich nations to set aside 0.7 percent of stimulus packages to support poor countries.   Key aid donors have repeatedly pledged to raise their aid spending to 0.7 of gross national income, but some - including the United States and Japan - still give far less.   Major economies struggling to emerge from a recession have spent trillions in stimulus packages to renew growth but Muasher said "ignoring to help poor countries is short-sighted."   Developing countries, initially shielded from the direct impact, are now being hurt by "second and third waves" of the financial crisis, which is coming on the heels of a damaging upward spiral of food and fuel costs, he said.   In particular, this was being felt in a drop of remittances, reduced investment in health, education and infrastructure projects and the inability to find credit, Muasher said.   "Health and education are the first areas to be dropped by governments in poor countries when budget deficits are high. This will have disastrous consequences in the long term."   July 2009   The Global Financial Crisis impact on developing countries. (ACFID)   The impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) is not limited to developed countries. The crisis is playing out as a human and development tragedy for developing countries and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is in jeopardy.   According to the World Bank, only a quarter of vulnerable countries will have the financial resources to lessen the impact of the financial downturn with social safety nets or job-creation programs. The Australian Council for International Development, an independent national association of Australian non-government organisations (NGOs) working in the field of international aid and development. ACFID has developed an online resource on the global financial crisis, visit the link below for more details. Visit the related web page
	There are 11,000 worker-owned companies in the United States by Carnegie Council Policy Innovations USA   0ct 2009   America is in the midst of a new revolution. But this revolution is quiet, incremental, nonviolent, and traveling beneath the mainstream media"s radar.   The new American revolution challenges the current notions of dog-eat-dog capitalism—through the building of a parallel economic system that shares, cooperates, empowers, and benefits fellow workers and community members.   Over the past few decades, thousands of alternatives to the standard, top-down corporate model have sprouted up—worker-owned companies and cooperatives, neighborhood corporations and trusts, community-owned technology centers and municipally owned enterprises.   In fact, today, involvement in these alternative models of business outnumber union membership as the means by which private-sector workers and community members are taking economics into their own hands. Maria Armoudian interviews author and University of Maryland political scientist Gar Alperovitz (America Beyond Capitalism) for AlterNet.   Maria Armoudian: How big is this economic movement in the United States?   Gar Alperovitz: It"s a huge development. But the press doesn"t cover it. At the grassroots level, there is a lot of activity that is changing the ownership of wealth and making it benefit neighborhoods, workers, cities and communities, at large. There are 11,000 worker-owned companies in the United States, and more people involved in them than are members of unions in the private sector. There are also 120 million Americans who are members of cooperatives—a huge number, about a third of the population.   About 20 percent or 22 percent of our energy is done under public utilities of one kind or another. There are another 4,000 or 5,000 neighborhood corporations, in which neighborhoods own productive wealth to benefit the neighborhood. Much of that is related to housing and land development, but also stores, businesses and factories.   One estimate is that there are 4,500 of these. One, called Newark New Communities, does several million dollars a year in business and pours profits back into helping service the neighborhood—health care and nutrition, education and jobs. So when you really begin to take the lid off of what is emerging in society, there are many forms of decentralized public ownership, social ownership or democratized wealth.   MA: Are there also new developments on the municipal level?   GA: Yes, because of fiscal crises, many cities, even under Republican mayors, are putting cities into enterprises. It was once called municipal socialism, but Republicans call it the "enterprising city," and it includes development of municipally owned cable television, Internet services, land and hotels.   Many cities are capturing methane from garbage areas and using it to produce electricity, create jobs and make money. They"re dealing with greenhouse gases as an enterprise.   On a larger, regional scale, the Tennessee Valley Authority is a gigantic, ecological operation that controls the river systems and is an energy system.   * Visit the link below for more details. Visit the related web page
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