RTFA: http://www.eurodad.org/whatsnew/articles.aspx?id=3…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said “Bretton Woods II” should bring about “genuine, all-encompassing reform of the international financial system”. The Council of the European Union sees the meeting as “tak[ing] early decisions on transparency, global standards of regulation, cross-border supervision and crisis management, to avoid conflicts of interest and to create an early warning system, so as to engender confidence among savers and investors in every country.” In announcing the meeting, the spokesperson for US President George Bush said that “leaders will review progress being made to address the current financial crisis, advance a common understanding of its causes, and, in order to avoid a repetition, agree on a common set of principles for reform of the regulatory and institutional regimes for the world’s financial sector”. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in a mid-October speech, set out several principles. These include transparency (internationally agreed accounting standards, credit insurance market standards), integrity (credit agencies, executive pay), responsibility (board member competency and expertise), sound banking practice (protecting against speculative bubbles).
For the new international architecture Brown and others are discussing an effective global early warning system for risk prevention, globally accepted standards to supervise cross-border capital flows and the activities of global firms, plus stronger institutions for cooperative action in crises. For CSOs it will be important that equity as well as stability is discussed at the conference and that fairer rules are developed for aid, debt, trade, investment, taxation and capital flight. The governance of the international financial institutions must be radically changed, fair debt workout mechanisms introduced, and much more.
Now that the election is behind us, on to new tasks… A very prominent, timely question: what will be the composition of the next global reserve currency? The US Dollar has enjoyed this position for some time, but the Dollar is in some trouble. What is the solution? That will be decided on November 15, 2008.
I’ve been calling this Bretton Woods III according to the following progression:
BW I was the agreement of world gold exchange
BW II was the agreement of the dollar reserve currency
BW III will be the establishment of a new model for global currency exchange
It seems this will be called Bretton Woods II for some reason, but no matter. The end result is a third round of negotiations for global reserve currency policy. What will this look like?
