We are witnessing the death of a paradigm. As is usual at moments of mourning, the new reality is being met by denial, resistance and anger from the initiators and defenders of the old faith.

It would be parochial to think recent events expose only flaws in the banking sector - micro-flaws - and the outcome will be a mere tinkering with the financial system. The dominant economic theory of [...]

Back in the 1970s, Kodak tried to give $25m to a black civil rights organisation in Rochester, New York. The company's shareholders rose up in arms: making this politically charged offering wasn't the reason they had entrusted Kodak with their money. The donation was withdrawn.

Fast-forward to the past 12 months. The Norwegian Petroleum Fund, the world's largest institutional investor, has hired an ethical phil osopher to determine what it [...]

The term "glass ceiling" was coined in 1984. More than 20 years later, the ceiling has barely cracked. There isn't a single country in the world that has as many female as male politicians. In business, the situation is even worse. Its highest echelon - the board - remains a chauvinist's dream. For every hundred men who are non- executive directors of UK companies, there are only 11 women. Portugal [...]

In the same week that the world's richest man, Bill Gates, announced he was giving up his job at Microsoft in favour of working at his charitable foundation, the world's second-richest man - Warren Buffett - announced he was donating three-quarters of his fortune to the foundation Gates has set up. Philanthropy on this scale dwarfs the investments made by the big philanthropists of old, and rivals the funds that [...]

A satirical film, Thank You for Smoking, looking at the power of Big Tobacco, hits our cinema screens on 16 June. It's a sharp reminder of just how sinister tobacco companies are. Five hundred million people will die of smoking-related illnesses over the next 50 years, yet the tobacco lobby continues to do all it can to keep up its sales.

Despite the tobacco industry's zeal, however, its efforts in [...]

It was an audacious project. To make poverty history in just one year. Yet in 2005 an unpre-cedented number of campaigners sought to do just that. From all corners of the world they came, their focus a few major summits - the EU, the UN, the World Bank and IMF meetings, the G8. Their aims: the cancellation of debt, an increase in aid and free and fair trade.

This was [...]

Thousands upon thousands of people are on their way to Edinburgh and Gleneagles, heading there because they believe that they can play a part in creating a global order in which the gains are not hoarded and the spoils are shared. They are focusing their call for justice on a particular region. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most damning indictment of the current global system that there is: 46 million children [...]

What's with the Guardian's policy of asking commentators to provide their e-mail addresses to publish along with their comment pieces? In the past, at least there were a few hurdles for weirdos and stalkers to jump over before they managed to get in touch. With this open-door policy, they're in your office at the click of a mouse. I wrote a piece for that paper last week on "debt [as] [...]

What we want

An independent international commission to investigate the impact of economic globalisationA World Social Organisation as a counterweight to the World Trade OrganisationGlobal indirect taxation on pollution and the use of resources to provide funds for redistributionLegislation to make parent companies accountable for actions of overseas subsidiariesA global legal aid fund to give all workers and communities access to justice

We live increasingly in a world of haves [...]

I grew up in a highly political home. My mother was the co-chair of the 300 Group, an organisation whose aim was to get more women MPs into parliament, and she herself stood in the 1987 election, the year before she died. I still remember that summer clearly: my home jam-packed with volunteers stuffing envelopes and providing back-up, endless car journeys up the M1, doorstep campaigning and letterbox leafleting, town-hall [...]