The "short century" – "century of cruelty" (Hobsbawm) – has drawn to a close. Development is still a problem. Distances are shrinking, the volume of communications is intensifying, frontiers are being wiped away and relations between human beings are becoming more direct. Unfortunately, year after year, the World Human Development Reports are pointing out the same themes: the persistence of mass poverty, widening gaps between individuals, groups and countries, the spread of the AIDS pandemic, unemployment and insecure employment, a fall in average life expectancy in certain countries, environmental insecurity, armed conflicts, the expansion of a "culture" enslaved to money threatening the identity and diversity of "cultures", the laundering of "dirty" money – representing, according to the IMF, 2-5 percent of world-wide GDP – corruption, persisting like an endemic disease. The conclusion is clear. If major prospects of progress are opening up to human beings and if the struggle against multidimensional poverty can be led successfully all over the world, it is not, as the United Nations Development Programme pointed out, with "current programmes of action" and globalization subject to the pitiless markets, which threatens solidarity, "invisible heart of human development". A new paradigm must be defined, new strategies must be proposed. Rules, institutions and procedures must be invented which will strengthen the governance and governability of the economy at global, regional and local levels – a radical renewal of economic thinking on which all efforts to rationalize are based.
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