Business Strategies: shhhh - there's another crisis happening

“The financial and economic crisis has reversed many development gains and interrupted progress in economic and social development. Accelerating progress in building a global partnership for development is crucial to overcoming these setbacks and achieving the MDGs by 2015,” said Lazarous Kapambwe, President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

His comment is under the tag line of development goals. But the reasons he is concerned are common to all economies: "the world [is] once again facing rising food and energy prices."

Those were two factors which were causing global disruption before the American home loans debacle took over as the primary force in a financial collapse that spread, within days, across the world.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also highlighted the fact that recent spikes in food and energy prices are also putting at risk the progress achieved over the past decade in lifting millions of people out of poverty.

But, with protests over fuel prices planned in the UK, countries running impossible budget deficits and those countries which support food prices facing substantial rises in the cost of subsidies, the UN's comments are beginning to look like pissing in the wind: the basic problem for the UN's development programmes right now is simple: the countries that were the biggest donors have used irresponsible helicopter strategies to shore up their economies in the past three years. Taxpayer funds are now being applied to try to reduce spectacular deficits. Much as charity is seen as a good thing, desirable even, the bottom line is that there just isn't enough money to go around.

And, as the fundamentals such as food and oil prices begin to create a further drain on those economies, the prospects of another crisis are increased.

That's where the UN really needs to focus its efforts.