By Nikos Xydakis

We live in truly historic times. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the geopolitical transformation that followed, I have rarely had that history-in-the-making sensation such as with the breakup of Yugoslavia, the air bombing of Belgrade, the terrorist strikes of 9/11, the US invasion of Iraq and the rise of China.

And now, the global credit crunch has sent shock waves through governments, central banks and ordinary people, awaking memories of the interwar crash in 1929.

There are many lessons to be drawn from this domino effect of bankruptcies and losses, the constant and escalating injections by central banks who are pumping millions of dollars into the troubled money markets to rescue the global credit system.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain slammed “unbridled corruption and greed,” while his Democratic rival Barack Obama stressed the need to regulate Wall Street. Both candidates know that if elected, they will have to clear up the mess left behind by the greedy free-for-all of the last few years. They also know that these losses have been passed onto the state, that profits have gone into the pockets of managers and speculators who have all these years talked about self-regulated markets, game models and expectations of high performance – all cut off from the public domain and the control of democratic states.

Being swayed by the words of speculators for years, politicians have now been forced to a rude awakening, forcing the government’s hand deep into public coffers, i.e. taxpayers’ pockets, the wealth of nations that went to various hedge funds. The US Federal Reserve has so far spent 1 trillion dollars to bail out those in debt.

The economy is not just numbers on screens. It’s something more real and tangible than this, shaped by people for the people. The economy is also political. And we are now witnessing the need to bring the economy back into the public sphere.