UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Diplomats and economists on Thursday urged world powers to update financial rules created at Bretton Woods that helped nations cope with economic problems following World War II.
October 31st, 2008 . by BastiUN calls for new ‘Bretton Woods’ financial rules
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Diplomats and economists on Thursday urged world powers to update financial rules created at Bretton Woods that helped nations cope with economic problems following World War II.
“We are now at another Bretton Woods moment,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University told the U.N. General Assembly. “This is a global crisis and it requires a global response.”
General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann convened a daylong debate on the global financial meltdown to position the world organization squarely at the center of a possible fix as world economic leaders prepare to meet to discuss the crisis at a Nov. 15 summit in Washington.
A new U.N. task force headed by Stiglitz will review the global financial system, including the activities of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, d’Escoto announced.
The 1944 Bretton Woods conference of major powers U.S.-led negotiations spawned the IMF and World Bank, under U.N. auspices. Stiglitz argued only the U.N. now has the inclusiveness and legitimacy needed to draft new global financial rules.
“Those in the north cannot take actions which help themselves at the expense of those in the developing nations,” he cautioned. “Any response cannot be based on trickle-down economics. The notion that helping those at the top will benefit all has been repeatedly rejected.”
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, a development economist at New York City’s New School and former U.N. official said global solutions were needed because the current system “shifts the burden to poor countries and households.”
“This will be felt by even the poorest countries that are, in fact, considered to be somewhat marginalized and poorly integrated into the global economy,” she said, citing falling commodity prices, drying-up capital and shrinking foreign aid as among the reasons.
D’Escoto, a priest who was Nicaragua’s foreign minister under the leftist Sandinistas, won applause from diplomats when he said the solution must involve more than prescriptions handed down by the Group of Eight industrialized nations.
“The stakes are too high are half-measures or quick fixes put together behind closed doors,” d’Escoto said. “Solutions must involve all countries in a democratic process.”
The speakers at the event made their remarks before a huge blue and white-lettered banner that read: “For the Democratization of the UNITED NATIONS. Every country counts.”
D’Escoto called the financial crisis a “game-changing” event which reveals a system based on “unbridled greed and pervasive corruption enabled by governments who lost sight of their responsibility to protect citizens.”
“It would be folly to put it back together again as it once was,” he said of the current financial system. “All nations must be subject to financial discipline.”
“For the Democratization of the UNITED NATIONS. Every country counts.” Code words for Socialism and Marxism. I’m telling you we’re being set-up for a ‘Global Tax’ on the rich nations so that the ‘wealth’ can be spread to the ‘poor nations’. And you know where that ‘wealth’ would go don’t you? Into the pockets of two for a nickel dictators, strongmen, and lazy bureaucrats who’ve never worked a day in their lives. See ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ for the perfect example of the foregoing.
