The glossary of greed http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/72112

With the 2011 Forbes List of the world’s billionaires recently released – and acutely aware of the huge volume of unaccounted for money found in offshore havens – Joan Baxter discusses the ‘highly stratified world that has become treacherously top-heavy’.The glossary of greed reveals a great deal about the upside-down values that have created a world where wealth is worshipped, compassion and sharing are disdained, and where greed, vanity, selfishness and cold-blooded ruthlessness are not vices – they have become virtues. They produce and prop up a highly stratified world that has become treacherously top-heavy. So few people now control such a large proportion of the world’s wealth because they’ve reshaped the world for themselves – subverted democracy and laid the groundwork for global turmoil and suffering, laughing all the way to the (offshore) bank.