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  • Carbon Market 'growth' mainly fraudulent, World Bank report shows
  • Is the World Bank-sponsored 'Red-Dead Sea conveyance project' viable?
  • IMF tells Japanese government to raise consumption tax despite election defeat
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G8/G20
The G-Sevenosaurus
Robin Hood (tax)
G8 and G20 in 2010

  • Definitetly NOT the G8 podcast on the Millennium Development Goals
  • Parliamentary Roundtables ahead of the G8/G20
  • CSO policy demands ahead of the G8-G20 meeting in 2010
  • Policy Paper: What's missing in the response to the global financial crisis?
  • SIGN-ON STATEMENT: Towards a Global Leaders Forum...FR | ESP
G8-G20 summits fall flat, ignore call for sustainable future
This month “Fortress Toronto”, with its 18,000 strong security forces and four kilometer chain link fence, bore witness to a Peoples’ Summit ripe with ideas and alternatives, petitions signed by 1.75 million asking leaders to invest in the future now, a 25,000 strong peaceful protest, media stunts galore, some regrettable violence, and two deeply disappointing summits...   Read more
Robin Hood Tax

Small change for the banks, big deal for the world!

  • Watch the new animated video and learn about the idea
  • Sign-on to the statement in support of the Robin Hood Tax (or FTT)
  • Get involved and download the Robin Hood toolkit
  • Read our brief on the FTT
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Monthly Issue Update - May31/June 30, 2010

G8-G20 summits fall flat, ignore call for sustainable future
This month “Fortress Toronto”, with its 18,000 strong security forces and four kilometer chain link fence, bore witness to a Peoples’ Summit ripe with ideas and alternatives, petitions signed by 1.75 million asking leaders to invest in the future now, a 25,000 strong peaceful protest, media stunts galore, some regrettable violence, and two deeply disappointing summits.

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G20 BLOG: Robin Hood Tax – A golden goose among a bunch of lame ducks

Fraser — 27 June, 2010 - 14:26

This weekend, G20 leaders have an opportunity to support a simple idea that would finally redistribute some of the much talked-about benefits of globalization to the rest of the world – to fight global poverty and climate change.

Last week, German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy wedded themselves to the idea of the Robin Hood Tax, writing a letter to Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper to put discussion of the tax on the agenda at this weekend’s meetings.

The idea is to impose a tiny tax of 0.05 per cent on all financial transactions on the stock market and futures markets. For the most part, it would target the speculative activity of day traders who make hundreds of thousands of deals a day using computer algorithms. Astonishingly, at just 0.05 percent, this tax could generate hundreds of billion dollars, several times the amount donor countries contribute to global aid budgets.

To date, Harper has dismissed the idea of a “bank tax” (not a Robin Hood Tax or financial transaction tax), largely on the grounds that Canadian banks (like those in India, Brazil, China, and South Korea) didn’t have the same financial meltdown in other countries.

This may be the case. But he is missing the point. This is more than just a financial crisis. It is an economic crisis.

  • Halifax Initiative Blog
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The Millennium Development Goals

Definitely not the G8  

  • Definitely NOT the G8 MAIN PAGE
  • CLICK TO LISTEN to Definitely NOT the G8 - MDG Podcast
  • Download to your IPod at http://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/dntg8/id378699606
  • PRODUCTION NOTES: 
    • General acknowledgements
    • MDG specific acknowledgements 
    • Interviewees
    • Funders and contributors
    • Full MDG script (word doc)

Final script May 22, 2010; release date June 18, 2010.

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

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DNTG8 - MDGs.mp3
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Bridge to South Korea: Global civil society meeting on the G20

Bridge to South Korea

Held in Toronto, on Monday and Tuesday, June 21-22, 2010, just ahead of the G8 Summit in Huntsville and the G20 Summit in Toronto, this meeting was intended as a strategy session for civil society organizations, platforms and networks from many G20 countries (and beyond) to discuss diverse perspectives on both the G20 as an institution and priorities with respect to its agenda.

As the outcome of an initial G20 strategy meeting in Washington DC in April of 2010 among various groups, the intention of this broader meeting of national, regional and international networks was three-fold:

  • To develop a greater understanding of the key issues on the G20 agenda as well as alternative agendas seeking to influence the G20;
  • To strengthen and solidify strategic connections among G20 and non-G20 countries in the lead up to the South Korean and French G20 meetings and strengthen the capacities of networks to develop their own analysis and strategies for confronting the G20;
  • To develop concrete ideas and proposals for collaboration with South Korean colleagues for the November Summit.

MEETING DETAILS

  • Final concept note - Bridge to South Korea: Global G20 Meeting
  • Final concept note - en Español
  • Final agenda
  • Participant's list
  • Presentations
    • Peter Chowla - G20 and public finance policy
    • Aniket Bhushan - G20 and private finance policy
  • Calendar of events (including events in South Korea)
  • Final Report | Rapport final
  • Mapping of national groups and priorities
  • Key contacts and focal points working on G20 issues
  • Funders
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Press Responses: June 9, 2010

http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/tax-06-09-2010

Financial transaction tax is no bank tax

By Fraser Reilly-King
Published June 9, 2010
   
Big banks can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

This past weekend, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty managed to rally China, Brazil and South Korea behind him at G20 meetings in Busan, South Korea, and put those pesky discussions about a global bank tax to rest.

Instead of discussing a bank tax at this month's summit, the G20 agreed to "develop principles reflecting the need to protect taxpayers, reduce risks from the financial system, protect the flow of credit in good times and bad, taking into account individual country's circumstances and options."

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Press Release: May 18, 2010

Robin Hood Tax: Canada misses a chance for Leadership

OTTAWA – The Canadian Government is missing an historic opportunity to offer constructive global leadership by refusing to consider any kind of levy on the global financial sector.

“There are two proposals on the table here,” said Fraser Reilly-King of the Halifax Initiative. “One would save the banks, the other would save the world. At a time when global poverty is rising, along with sea levels, and European economies are crashing, the Harper government is actively campaigning against both.”

A Bank Tax would apply broadly and ensure future bailout funds would come from banks themselves, not the public. Canada’s counterproposal involves “embedded contingent capital,” which would shift the burden to shareholders, turning [contingent] bonds to equity if the banks run into trouble.

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Chilean Communities and CSOs Urge U.S. Ex-Im Bank to Reject Pascua Lama

Fred P. Hochberg
President
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Washington, D.C.
[Via e-mail]

May 10, 2010

Re: Pascua Lama

Dear President Hochberg,

It has come to our attention that the Ex-Im Bank has received a request to finance the binational Pascua Lama mine. We are writing to strongly urge that the Ex-Im Bank reject financing for the Pascua Lama mine.

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Presentation to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on the Financial Transactions Tax

Innovative mechanisms for financing development, and in particular the Financial Transactions Tax

by Fraser Reilly-King, Coordinator, Halifax Initiative Coalition
May 6, 2010

My name is Fraser Reilly-King and I am the Coordinator of the Halifax Initiative, a coalition of eighteen development, environment, faith-based, human rights and labour organizations. We focus on international finance issues, in particular with respect to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and export credit agencies.

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Canadian Robin Hood Tax Video

Financial Transaction Tax

A tiny fee on the trade in financial transactions paid by banks, not by people it would raise billions of dollars for fighting poverty and climate change at home and around the world.

http://robinhoodtax.ca

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