Nicholas Gilani, co-head of the Investment Banking Group at the National Bank of Abu has a letter in today’s FT.
He writes,
“Sir,
…I would like to say that the protesters in New York, Chicago, London and other places should not be criticised for incoherence in voicing their grievances about capitalism.
“I suspect that capitalism, in its current modus operandi, is undergoing a structural transformation. The symptoms surfaced like a volcano in the corporate sector in 2008-09 and have spread to the sovereign sector. The corporate and sovereign crises, it can be argued, are inter-related and probably sequential. No one can say what is next in the sequence.
“Military expenditures, too, have had a debilitating effect on the capitalist system. For example, the US has been engaged in military conflicts continuously, at various levels of intensity, since the first Gulf war. (It has been at war with someone for nearly eight of the 11 decades since 1900!)
“Capitalism, as we know it, is shedding one layer of skin and putting on another. This self-regeneration will complete its course in the next few years. Which nation or region will be first to embody the newly transformed capitalistic system? The answer is still a work in progress.”
Nicholas M. Gilani, Co-Head, Investment Banking Group, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Perhaps the fact that the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year has been awarded to ‘Poor Economics — A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty’ is a part of this change.