So this is what it has come to. We’ve finally reached the scary existential moment I’ve been dreading for the last 20 years.

A perfect storm of doomsday scenarios — the grinding anxiety of the precariousness of our jobs and our lives, the explosive tension of the rich-poor gap, the constant threat of speculative bubbles and ecological tipping points …

And what’s fuelling it, fuelling of all of it in some way? Big Finance. We’ve allowed a global financial architecture to take hold that’s completely self-destructive. It’s both reflecting the chaos of the climate emergency and actually creating it. I wake up every morning half-expecting to find the Dow Jones has just plummeted ten thousand points.

The global financial system is a kind of tyranny, and nothing good can happen on Planet Earth until we seriously rein it in. Until we restore value to the heart of the exchange equation, until we build a vibrant economy that rewards real innovation, one that ’s about making useful things and providing needed services — real work and real output, rather than the useless offgassing of high finance.

Derivatives and credit default swaps and crypto-leveraging, did not even exist 20 years ago. Now it’s a multi-trillion-dollar game that will take us down with it when it collapses.

#OccupyWallStreet was a good first shot, but did not quite fix things. Now it’s up to us, the Third Force to launch an all-out onslaught and get the job done. We must deliver a sustained succession of devastating blows to the soft underbelly of Big Finance and win the fight for a new sense of value.