The Current Discussion: With the Israeli re-invasion of Gaza, it's clear that the "Annapolis Peace Process" is collapsing. Does it matter? Who's to blame?

The lack of urgency by the West to act more resolutely to end the carnage in the Gaza is shameful. The UN Security Council is depressingly impotent. It is splitting hairs over the text to describe Israel’s spectacularly disproportional military attacks to respond to rocket attacks from Gaza. The Israeli blockade of the entire Gaza population, which is essentially collective punishment of all Palestinians for the actions of a few Hamas militants and their leaders, cannot be right. Israeli use of military tanks to bomb Hamas out of power once and for all will not only worsen the already terrible humanitarian crisis, but it will increase Palestinian bitterness.

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The Current Discussion:The global economy is quaking. Are we heading toward a global recession? Who's to blame?

Most developing economic managers spend the past week reassuring worried local markets that their countries’ will survive the financial problems that caused U.S. investment bank Bear Stearns to go belly-up. Although the brunt of the credit crunch so far has only affected developed markets – the U.S., European Union countries, the UK and Japan – developing markets feel the ripples, too. In fact, a delayed reaction may yet hit those markets. A case in point is South Africa. Although the country’s financial system is relatively strong, a global slowdown caused by this financial crisis will hit the country’s high economic growth rates. The South African Treasury has already revised its growth prospects down to 4% from the 5 % average levels for the past four years, partly in anticipation of a global downturn. Emerging market economies are very much tied to global economic tremors. The combination of risk aversion, lending freeze and lower confidence associated with the current financial crisis may cause capital outflows from some emerging markets. It is remarkable how a crisis that started with a local U.S. home loan market problem has, because of the interconnectedness of the global financial system, spilled-over globally. If anything, this financial crisis must lead to decisive reform, in the same active way the U.S. Federal Reserve intervened to prevent the country’s financial system from free-fall, when it took guarantee of US $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets in the biggest central bank bailout in American history.

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