Financial architecture

Monthly Issue Update - April 30, 2010

IMF, European Union look to bail out Greece
Greece’s debt crisis is finally coming to a head, with International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to deal with the country’s deficit and heavy debt load being hammered out in Athens. The European Union and the IMF are negotiating the terms of a bailout as fears mount that Greece’s crisis could soon spread to other countries in Europe and beyond. Other nations carrying significant debt loads, including the United States, are concerned that the Greek crisis is a harbinger of things to come, closer to home.

Policy Brief: The Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) - An idea whose time has come - April 2010

Introduction
A growing number of politicians, civil society organizations, economists and some financiers have become strong advocates of a global Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). An FTT is a tiny tax on financial market transactions such as equity, bond, derivative or foreign exchange trades.

Political leaders, including the presidents of France and Germany and the prime minister of Britain, back an FTT as one of the best ways to fund programs to fight world poverty, pay for climate mitigation and adaptation costs and make financial institutions pay their fair share of the costs of the global crisis which, in large part, was created by their practices. Prominent economists advocate a Financial Transactions Tax as one way to cool down excessive speculation in financial markets, a principal cause of the economic crisis.

Fifteen years is enough - March 2010

Fifteen years is enoughWhat’s changed in the international financial system and its institutions, what hasn’t and what needs to

Executive Summary
Back in 1995, the G7 met in Halifax during a “time of change and opportunity.” The meeting took place in a context of mounting deficits and debt crises in countries in the South; in the wake of economic collapse in Mexico; and amid strong global criticism from civil society, the media and governments about the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) austere neo-liberal structural adjustment policies.

A lot has changed since then, partly in response to the Halifax G7 Summit and subsequent G7 and G8 meetings. Too many of these improvements, however, exist only on paper. Beyond the surface, the neo-liberal, market-oriented bias that guides the Bank and Fund’s agenda and thinking has not altered.

The 2010 G8 Summit in Toronto in 2010 takes place during another “time of change and opportunity.” The financial crisis has spurred many civil society organizations (CSOs) to insist on far-reaching changes to the global financial system and its institutions. Clearly, as this publication will illustrate, 15 years of refusing to deal with the manifest shortcomings of the global economic system is enough.

Event: Parliamentary roundtables on the G8/G20 Agendas - April 20, 26 and 27, 2010

Parliamentary Roundtables on the G8/G20 Agendas

2010 is an important and unique moment for Parliamentarians to engage with Canadians on some of the most important global issues facing our planet and our future.  On June 25th, 2010, Canada will play host to leaders from the Group of Eight countries in Muskoka, followed by a meeting of G20 leaders in Toronto on June 26-27.

To date, there has been little discussion among parliamentarians about the themes leading up to the 2010 summits, and Canadian civil society is looking to engage members from all parties in a discussion around some of the issues highlighted in our civil society platform, An Agenda for Global Development: G8/G20 Civil Society Coalition Platform, endorsed by over 60 organizations across the country.  The platform discusses specific, measurable, realistic recommendations to put poverty eradication, economic recovery for all and environmental justice at the centre of the international agenda.

To facilitate the conversation, Canadian civil society is organizing three parliamentary roundtables to discuss party perspectives on climate change, the financial crisis and the millennium development goals (MDGs). The Roundtables will occur as the G20 Finance Ministers meet in Washington, as G8 Development Ministers meet in Halifax and as Canada hosts the Africa Partnership Forum in Toronto.

Roundtable 1: Climate change
When:     Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 - 9:00 am –11:00 am
Where:    Room 2-2, Booth Building, 165 Sparks Street, Ottawa

Roundtable 2: Global financial crisis
When:     Monday, April 26th, 2010 - 5:00 pm –7:00 pm
Where:    Room 2-2, Booth Building, 165 Sparks Street, Ottawa

Roundtable 3: Millennium Development Goals
When:     Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 - 9:00am –11:00am
Where:    Room 2-2, Booth Building, 165 Sparks Street, Ottawa

ROUNDTABLE DETAILS

Canadian G8 G20 Civil Society Platform

Roundtable Agendas

Moderator, MP and Expert Bios 

Podcasts

Press Responses: Op Ed - The Robin Hood Tax – Its Aim is True

In "Alternatives", April 1, 2010
http://www.alterinter.org/article3457.html?lang=en

T-A-X. Such a simple three letter word, and yet it elicits responses from people out of all proportion to its size. Perhaps it isn’t surprising. Taxes are scary.

But let’s not forget, as much as you may hate them, without them, we wouldn’t have public health care, education, infrastructure, police and ambulances, government, politicians…(OK, maybe scratch that one). You get the idea. Boring and controversial as they are, taxes are essential.

Press Responses: February 3, 2010

Three ways to pay for aid commitments
EMBASSY – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Stephen Harper’s announcement that child and maternal health will be the signature theme of June’s G8 meeting is certainly timely.

Every day 1,400 women die of pregnancy-related causes.  Every day 24,000 children under the age of five die of what are largely preventable causes. Progress on improving child and maternal health is the furthest off-track of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) UN member states committed to in 2000. This focus gives MDGs four and five, on child and maternal health, the push they need ahead of September’s United Nations High Level Meeting and ten year review of the MDGs.

But funding the initiative comes during difficult days – a global crisis and a budget deficit. Resources are tight.

Policy Paper: What’s missing in the response to the global financial crisis? - January 2010

Rethinking the international financial system during a time of crisis

Introduction
On October 19 and 20, 2009, the Halifax Initiative held a conference, co-hosted by The North South Institute, the University of Ottawa and the School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS), entitled "What’s Missing in the Response to the Global Financial Crisis?" The meeting brought together experts from a range of backgrounds to analyze the challenges facing the global economy, discuss the ways in which the international community has responded to the current financial crisis, and identify shortcomings in these responses.

Letter to IMF Head Strauss-Kahn from over 90 groups re. civil society participation in IMF study on how the financial sector can help pay for the bailouts - November 11, 2009

November 11, 2009

Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund,
700 19th Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20431

Dear Mr. Strauss-Kahn:

Re: Request for civil society participation in IMF study on how the financial sector can help pay for the bailouts 

In September, the Group of 20 (G20), at their summit in Pittsburgh, mandated the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with preparing a report ahead of the next G20 summit in June 2010 to consider “how the financial sector could make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burdens associated with government interventions to repair the banking system.”

Definitely NOT the G8

Definitely not the G8In June 2010, the Halifax Initiative launched the first in a series of radio documentary -type podcasts under the rubric of "Definitely NOT the G8" just ahead of the 2010 Group of Eight (G8) and Twenty (G20) meetings in Huntsville and Toronto, Canada on June 25-27 2010.

The podcasts have three goals:

  • to raise awareness in Canada about progressive social, economic and environmental justice issues in the international development and finance arena that are often missing from, or disregarded in, official discussions and the mainstream media;

Gordon Betcherman

Governance and institution - Global economic governance in crisis: new players, new power

Moderator: Gordon Betcherman, Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa

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