Following news of the financial and economic crisis hitting Europe, particularly Greece, Spain and Portugal, I was impressed by two words I heard.
One was the word 'savage' used by a senior BBC journalist referring to the package which the European Union offered to Greece, and the other was 'rubble' used by a senior British politician when referring to Europe's financial mess.
During the past 25 years I have been living in Brazil as a priest working in a parish, this Third World country has served as an 'open university' for me, since I have been closely following local politics, social movements, and social pastoral activity within the Church.
As a result of this experience, the word 'savage' used by the journalist reminded me of the term 'savage capitalism', which has been the definition the Church and respectable social movements and parties gave to the capitalism practised and imposed on Third World countries, since the time of the highly respected prelate, Archbishop Helder Camara, who I think was the first to give capitalism this description in our times.
It was a controversial phrase, but now I feel this term, first coined by a Catholic bishop and adopted by a host of bishops all over Latin America, has now been 'canonised', even if inadvertently, by the BBC journalist.
The same journalist said tax evasion in Greece has cost the country some €20 billion a year. If the country goes after this money, as Brazil did these past years, in a few years it will repay all the loans it is receiving, without the need to cut salaries and pensions - which to my mind justifies referring to the 'deal' approved by the Greek Parliament as 'savage'.
The term 'rubble' is, to my mind, the right word to explain the turmoil the US and European economies have found themselves in. 'Recession' is not the right word to describe the current financial confusion and humiliation. 'Rubble' is indeed a better description.
Once proud and untouchable western financial institutions have become like the Tower of Babel, where nobody knows what is what, which is which, what to do or not to do, and so on.
I hope Western governments realise that the G-7 got it all wrong and that the solution necessarily has to come through the G-20, which represents 80 per cent or more of the world's population.