There is great uncertainty about the future of the world economy and developing countries should prepare now for the next crisis, according to prominent experts at a finance seminar in Geneva last week.

THE world economy will be going through a period of uncertainty and turbulence in the next few years and the developing countries should prepare to face this challenge and avoid being overwhelmed.

On the 21^st of May, a spectacular meeting of more than 900 worker activists took place at the SIDOR steel works in Ciudad Guayana in the eastern part of Venezuela. The purpose of this encounter was to discuss the ongoing struggle for workers' control in the Bolivarian Revolution.

After a short cultural event on Friday, the meeting itself opened on Saturday 21st of May in the theatre hall of SIDOR. This venue has a total capacity of 550, but the room quickly got completely packed, with more than 200 extra workers following the proceedings standing up. More workers joined the meeting on Sunday, thus giving a total assistance of 900. The opening ceremony was especially emotive, with the singing of the Venezuelan national anthem followed by the anthem of the world proletariat: The International.

Hundreds of thousands of people (from 300.000 to 500.000 according to various estimations) took part in Athens this Sunday 5 June, for more than 6 hours, in one of the most impressive popular protests of the last 20 years. A human sea covered the whole center of the Greek capital; in

Countries everywhere are facing debt crises today, precipitated by the credit collapse of 2008. Public services are being slashed and public assets are being sold off in a futile attempt to balance budgets that can't be balanced because the money supply itself has shrunk. Governments usually get the blame for excessive spending, but governments did not initiate the crisis. The collapse was in the banking system and in the credit that it is responsible for creating and sustaining.