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The current financial crisis is arguably the worst most banking managers have experienced in their professional lives. But we must remember that markets and industries are redefined in times of shake ups, not in times of stability. The current crisis should actually have a positive impact on those who develop the right strategies and take the right actions during the downturn.

Technology, communications, and business are undergoing extensive transformations. The paradigm shift we witness in the Internet, telecommunications, and mobile technologies deeply influences the business world around us. The new paradigm that we are entering can be illustrated through the introduction of the concept of "World 2.0".

Ecological economics (EE) is critical of the notion of growth-as-progress. Gross domestic product (GDP) is criticized both technically and fundamentally as hiding the social – environmental and distributive – costs of economic expansion. From an EE perspective, externalities are not accounting problems, but social cost-shifting successes predicated upon institutional and power inequalities that allow some peoples' values to count and others' not.

This commentary argues that we should not be surprised about the whirl of debate on the causes and consequences of the global financial crash. Technology has brought together a fascinating and disparate world in a way, and at a speed we have never before experienced. Our knowledge about the global financial system and what drives it is partial and clouded.

Today, the average American books their travel online, files taxes electronically, and even buys their movies tickets over the Web. So why do financial firms continue to mail investors oversized prospectus books when we live in an electronic age?