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# The choice: leadership or collapse
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-choice-leadership-or-collapse/
- Published: 2008-10-12T12:10:51.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:59:25.000Z
- Author: Will Hutton
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:57

In the week of the crash in 1929, Wall Street fell by 23%. In the week of 6-10 October 2008, it fell by 18%; while London and Frankfurt fell by 21% and Japan's Nikkei by 24%. Every major financial centre's interbank market is frozen. Trust and confidence have collapsed; the global system is paralysed on a scale that now surpasses 1929\. There is a combination of a worldwide bank-run, seizure of credit markets and collapse of asset values that could plunge the globe into a depression. This is history's joke: the crisis of capitalism long predicted by communists and socialists who are no longer able to take advantage of it.

(To read on, click [here](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/12/marketturmoil-creditcrunch?ref=opendemocracy.net) \- and see Tony Curzon Price's response [here](https://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/tony-curzon-price/2008/10/12/time-to-rupt-the-banks))

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Will Hutton is chief executive of the [Work Foundation](http://www.theworkfoundation.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net). He writes a weekly [column](http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/willhutton?ref=opendemocracy.net) in the *Observer*. His books include [*The World We’re In*](http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780316860819?ref=opendemocracy.net)(Little, Brown, 2002), [*A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World*](http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring04/032560.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net)(WW Norton, 2003), and [*The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century*](http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780349118826?ref=opendemocracy.net) (Little, Brown, 2008)