The bright graduates of business schools have proved me wrong. Writing in Part 18 of this series in August 2007, I had warned of a worldwide economic collapse by 2010. The MBAs have ensured it already in October 2008.

The US Congress has responded with a bailout package of $700 billion. This money has not been offered to defaulting home owners. It has been put in the hands of the same investment bankers who brought the world on the edge in the first place. This is on top of the $800 billion that the American government has spent on the Iraq War and related adventures. We now know that the world has a capacity to blow up $1500 billion. And this is just the beginning. More bailouts will be required as more defaults take place in today�€™s debt economy.

Of course, the problem is not confined to the United States. Other economies are sinking in equally deep water. These days, rumours spread very fast. One of them speculates combined losses from financial collapse and failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to cross $5000 billion. Another school of thought considers this too exaggerated. According to this school, the losses would be in the range of only $2500-3000 billion.

While we have public funds for fighting wars and bailing out badly run financial enterprises, we don�€™t have resources for bigger problems.

Ever since I wrote my Part 18 a year ago, more than 10 million children have died of malnutrition and preventable diseases. In fact, in the first decade of the 21st century, 100 million children would have died avoidable deaths. That is more than the toll of the Second World War. If Lehman Brothers collapses throwing a few thousand overpaid executives out of jobs, there is a hue and cry all over the world. But 100 million children have died in a tragedy larger than the Second World War and the world�€™s does not find it worthwhile to report it in headlines. Every single day 5,000 children die only because of lack of access to sanitation. As Brian Appleton, an expert with the United Nations sums it: �€œthis is tantamount to two dozen jumbo jets crashing.�€ Imagine the frenzy the world�€™s media will go in if 24 jumbo jets crashed even on one day. But it does not matter if two jumbo loads of children die for no fault of their own every day. Are we cruel, stupid or just shameless?

It is possible to save the life of 100 million children �€“ who would otherwise die in the next ten years from malnutrition, lack of sanitation and shortage of inoculation drugs - if we spend $70 billion to pull them out of abysmal poverty. However, the world does not have $70 billion for this purpose. It has $700 billion to rescue badly run investment banks and $800 billion to fight wars that kill children.

About 1 billion people lack access to safe and clean water. It is possible to solve their problem if we can invest $100 billion in new water supply systems. Of course, we don�€™t have funds for improving water security of the underprivileged.

About 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity. If each person is given a solar lantern, the total bill for the entire world will be $70 billion. We don�€™t have money for solar energy for the poorest of the poor.

About 100 million people are homeless. We need only a few billions to build sustainable habitats for them. Of course, we don�€™t have funds to take care of people�€™s housing and dignity needs.

The problems are not only of the elite of the developed world. The elite in emerging economies are not fundamentally different. In India about 1 million people (according to NGO estimates and one third of this number according to government estimates) are manual scavengers. They spend their daily life cleaning, removing and carrying on their heads human faeces from dry latrines. Asia�€™s rising economic power is flushed with dollars and pounds to buy overseas companies but lacks pennies to provide toilets with water to every citizen.

India�€™s manual scavengers earn a princely sum of three or four dollars per month. They are richer than many people in Rwanda and Somalia. Africa�€™s 1 billion people can start a new life if their debt of $300 billion is written off and accounts of their rulers in Western banks are unearthed. The world has neither funds to rid Africa of its debt nor guts to reveal banking secrets of corrupt rulers. We need all the funds that we can get to save the bank managers who manage these corrupt accounts.

This is not to say that the global financial system should not be rescued. We certainly need to save it. However, at the same time we should remind ourselves of bigger problems that we tend to ignore. We desperately need a new architecture of global governance with new priorities, methods and rules that are capable of dealing with the complexity of 21st century instead of a system that merely confirms the outcome of a war fought more than six decades ago.