Since the beginning of the year, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been sharing details on the U.N.’s primary focuses this year. One of his global calls is to switch to "emergency mode" in the global fight against the coronavirus and to accelerate the steps to eliminate the vaccine inequality between different continents and countries. The other major areas of concern are "emergency action mode without delay" for global climate change, intense effort for building sustainable peace and prioritizing humanity in digitalization transformation, as the world's leading experts are also extensively discussing the risks and threats toward turning people into digital slaves. Another critical topic that the U.N. leader is focusing on is the transformation of the global financial system.

"The global financial system is morally bankrupt. It favours the rich and punishes the poor. We need a new architecture that delivers for all, and closes the gap between the financial and the real economies once and for all," Guterres clearly said.

My question is what do Turkey’s leading neoliberal orthodox economists think about this striking statement. This is because while the economic management is trying to fight the pandemic fallout on the Turkish economy and to keep production, employment, exports and growth strong, some neoliberal orthodox economists say that low loan rates are "not good" for the banking sector. Its almost as if the Turkish banking sector has never had any experience in maintaining a balance between its resource and loan costs in the last 45 years.

We are in the middle of a financial system profitability-real sector profitability imbalance problem that has gained momentum since the second half of the 1990s. On a global scale, the difference in profitability between the two different areas has increased eight times. Guterres is making a global call for new architecture that will bridge this frightening gap. What will these neoliberal orthodox economists say now? Are they going to say that the U.N. secretary-general is wrong too? Will they claim that the current understanding of the global financial system has not driven the world into bankruptcy while the global debt spiral has exceeded $280 billion?

Conscious Capitalism

Essentially, all calls lead to the same point: "conscious capitalism." The world’s leading economies now need to establish more empathy toward emerging economies. With conscious capitalism, we have to place industrialization on a new platform based on zero waste, green energy and fair income distribution.

Let's not forget, "Globalization 2.0" was neither fair nor inclusive. Undoubtedly, it was the most important reason for its failure. Therefore, it is an indisputable priority that "Globalization 3.0" must be fair and inclusive. This time, fair globalization must include a sincere struggle against regional and global poverty.