ARTICLE: Global Stocks Sink as Crisis Spirals; Fed Moves to Thaw Credit, By Steven Mufson and Neil Irwin, Washington Post, October 7, 2008; Page A01

The analyst in me detaches in fascination: the profound interdependency of global economics being asserted negatively, it makes everything that came before it (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, SARS/avian flu, tsunamis, Russia/Georgia) seem minuscule in comparison.

This is the financial Y2K of our nightmares: demonstrating an undeniable, inescapable connectivity that renders all fantasies of great power conflicts essentially moot. The "common wealth," as Sachs would put it, is simply made manifest.

Arguably, this is the first great, system-perturbing crisis of globalization, because it truly captures all the main players in a way that previous ones did not.

As always, the question will be: What new rules and rule-setting venues emerge? Because eventually they must. The Asian Flu didn't do it, nor have any of the other more regional shocks since, but eventually you need some entities to emerge to monitor and manage these cross-border financial flows. This gap has been clear for many years, but as long as informal collusion among the largest economies has worked--just well enough--no one's been willing to surrender the power. Maybe this perturbation, then, is really the one.

That's how you need to view this global churn in a grand strategic sense: the opportunity to fill in profound rule-set gaps generated by all this rising connectivity.

In the right hands, this crisis becomes a huge impetus for new political understanding among the world's great powers, reminding them all that what really matters in this age is protecting and expanding the wealth among those being lifted out of centuries of poverty.

You either meet the expectations of that emerging global middle class or all of the other preferred "trainwrecks" are made insignificant.

This crisis reminds me of a Talking Heads' song that begins with Byrne yelling, "Everybody! Get in line!"

If anything, it reminds us of how irrelevant the whole "league of democracies" concept is.

It's called a "league of capitalist great powers," and it needs to be called to order--truly--for the first time in history.