Sozialalmanach - Caritas Luxembourg

The crisis and poverty
Reflections on the global economic
and financial crises
F R A N K T U R N E R s j
For this reflection I draw on two international reflection seminars among Jesuits and our
colleagues, organised by the Jesuit European Office in Brussels, as well as certain external
resources that were prominent in our minds as we met, such as Pope Benedict’s encyclical
Caritas in Veritate 1 . I have no competence to discuss the specific situation of Luxembourg,
and my remarks will be general. The attempt to reflect on the crisis in relation to poverty
entails a clear approach and perspective, for example relating this crisis – however briefly – to
that of climate change (which threatens first and foremost the world’s poor) and to the
ethical evaluation of the world economic order as such.
The Crisis triggered
What constitutes a crisis? I borrow a synthetic account offered to a recent Jesuit conference
by the Spanish economist Gabriel Pérez Alcalá. The following elements seem central:
– the rate of growth of an economy is seriously below its expected level;
– there occur serious disequilibria in the main components of the system (unemployment,
prices, public debt);
– there is stagnant and falling income of families and businesses: or (as in the USA in
2008) overwhelming family and business debt);
– there is a serious loss of confidence in future.
Pérez Alcalá was convinced that our present situation deserves this description. Virtually
every major economy on the planet has experienced either a slowing of growth or an actual
fall in Gross National Product (GNP). All developed economies are in recession. There
has been major fall in the price levels of many basic goods. There is rising unemployment
almost everywhere – and mass unemployment is an extraordinary social evil that can spawn
even worse evils, and therefore turns the financial-economic crisis into a social crisis too.
1 Benedict XVI (2009).
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