O sistema multilateral precisa de uma reformulação profunda, avisa Zoellick
A crise financeira global está a arrastar muitos países em desenvolvimento
Divulgação de Notícias Nº2007/105/EXC
WASHINGTON, 6 de Outubro de 2008 – O modo como o mundo tenta resolver os problemas económicos tem de ser repensado, face à actual crise global, incluindo a transformação do Grupo dos Sete num Grupo Dirigente que atribua poderes aos estados económicos em ascensão, afirmou o Presidente do Banco Mundial, Robert B. Zoellick.
Referindo-se às próximas eleições norte-americanas, Zoellick disse que o novo presidente não poderá limitar-se a tentar “encontrar a estabilização financeira” mas terá de solucionar “as repercussões económicas subsequentes”. Quem quer que seja eleito terá de trabalhar com os outros na modernização do sistema multilateral pois é necessário que haja uma maior responsabilidade partilhada para a solidez e funcionamento eficaz da economia global de hoje em dia.
“O G-7 não funciona. Precisamos de um grupo melhor para um tempo diferente”, afirmou Zoellick num discurso no Peterson Institute for International Economics em Washington D.C. “Com vista à cooperação financeira e cooperação, teremos de considerar um novo Grupo Dirigente que inclua o Brasil, China, Índia, México, Rússia, Arábia Saudita, África do Sul e o actual G-7.”
Num discurso que antecede as próximas Reuniões Anuais do Grupo Banco Mundial, Zoellick referiu que o Grupo Dirigente terá de ser mais do que uma mera substituição do G-7 por um G-14 com um número fixo, pois tal seria utilizar métodos do velho mundo para reconstruir o novo. O Grupo Dirigente terá de evoluir para se adaptar às circunstâncias em mutação, incluindo novas potências emergentes, servindo, ao mesmo tempo, de rede para uma interacção frequente. “Precisamos de um Facebook para uma diplomacia económica multilateral”, afirmou Zoellick.
Alertando para os efeitos da crise financeira, Zoellick disse: “Os acontecimentos de Setembro poderiam ser um ponto de viragem para muitos países em desenvolvimento. Uma quebra nas exportações, bem como nas entradas de capital, irá desencadear a queda dos investimentos. A desaceleração do crescimento e a deterioração das condições financeiras, combinadas com a restrição monetária, irão produzir falências de empresas e, possivelmente, emergências bancárias. Alguns países serão arrastados para crises da balança de pagamentos. Como sempre acontece, os mais pobres são os mais indefesos”.
O antigo diplomata americano, negociador de regras do comércio e executivo financeiro, afirmou que o multilateralismo económico precisava de ser redefinido para além do seu centro tradicional de atenção nas finanças e no comércio. Energia, mudanças climáticas e estabilização de estados frágeis e em fase de pós conflito eram questões económicas e não apenas parte do diálogo global sobre segurança e o ambiente.
Zoellick declarou que o Novo Multilateralismo tem de dar valor igual ao desenvolvimento e às finanças internacionais, ou então o mundo permanecerá um lugar instável. Mas o sistema de ajuda não estava a funcionar suficientemente bem e precisava de se movimentar mais rápida e eficazmente para poder ajudar os mais vulneráveis quando a crise se abate. O Grupo Banco Mundial também precisa de reforma. Zoellick anunciou a criação de uma Comissão de Alto Nível sob a liderança do antigo Presidente do México Ernesto Zedillo que tem por missão considerar a modernização da governação do Grupo Banco Mundial.
Voltando às conversações multilaterais sobre o comércio, Zoellick disse que a ronda de Doha estava “estagnada” e, portanto, os países deviam considerar a facilitação do comércio como uma outra forma de cortar os custos do comércio. “Há oportunidades para reduzir os custos do comércio numa dimensão muito maior do que a que resulta da imposição de tarifas e outras barreiras comerciais”, afirmou.
Descrevendo os mercados mundiais da energia como “um caos”, Zoellick apelou a uma “negociação global” entre produtores e consumidores de energia. Os dois lados podiam participar em planos para expandir o abastecimento, melhorar a eficiência e reduzir a procura, prestar assistência aos pobres em matéria de energia e analisar o modo como estas políticas estão relacionadas com as políticas de produção de carbono e de alterações climáticas
“Podia haver um interesse comum em gerir um leque de preços que concilie os interesses ao mesmo tempo que estabelece a transição para estratégias destinadas a baixar as emissões de carbono, um portfolio mais amplo de fontes de energia e uma maior segurança internacional” afirmou Zoellick.
Zoellick mencionou que o Grupo Banco Mundial está a elaborar, com vários dadores, uma iniciativa de Energia para os Pobres para ajudar os países mais necessitados a atender as necessidades energéticas de uma forma eficiente e sustentável.
quinta-feira, 9 de outubro de 2008
Crise da Democracia
Our leaders are impotent to tame the beast: this crisis is one of democracyPoliticians' limitations have been laid bare during these tumultuous weeks. If ever they can assert strength, it is now
Jonathan FreedlandWednesday October 8 2008The Guardian
Is it time to stash the tinned soup and bottled water in the cellar, along with a shortwave radio and a dagger, just in case? Just where, exactly, is this financial crisis going to end - with the collapse of the entire banking system, plunging London into a Mad Max purgatory of burnt-out cars and howling dogs, as survivors of the disaster stab each other for a last hunk of bread?
You won't hear Robert Peston predicting that on the Today programme. But when the air is filled with talk of meltdowns and crashes, when 40% is wiped off the value of two of Britain's largest banking groups in a single day, as it was yesterday, you find yourself wondering. Not least because no one can offer certain reassurance of anything. In the past few weeks, actions once considered unimaginable have happened. There was a time when to suggest that a British government would nationalise not one but two high-street banks would have had you certified as a hopeless leftist fantasist. Now public ownership has become the norm, with the City itself and a former Conservative chancellor demanding more of it and fast.
"Everyone knows they're going to have to do it," Ken Clarke said yesterday of the proposed recapitalisation plan, expected to be part of the government package announced this morning and which would see the taxpayer buy a stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds TSB: "Get on with it."
Now nothing seems impossible. Those rapidly emptying out their accounts are doing so because they can imagine the banks crashing to the ground, taking their life-savings with them. I spoke with one financial adviser whose phone has grown hot with clients wondering whether they should move their money to Ireland. "But what if the Irish banks collapse?" he tells them. "Would Ireland really have enough money to reimburse all those depositors?" Once it seemed ridiculous to suggest a national banking system going bust. Now it's possible that an entire country could go bankrupt: look at Iceland, forced yesterday to phone Moscow begging for a loan. It's enough to make you want to shove your cash in a piggy bank, hide it under the mattress - then pull the duvet over your head and hope it all goes away.
The instinctive response to such a situation - not that anyone under 80 has lived through anything comparable - is to look for someone to fix it. And that someone means the government.
And yet, up till last night at least, the politicians had been floundering. Alistair Darling addressed the House of Commons on Monday in order to calm the markets and reassure the nation. Yet, as yesterday's Guardian front-page graphic cruelly illustrated, his words had precisely the opposite effect. In the 11 minutes it took him to promise that he would do "whatever it takes" to keep the financial ship afloat, the markets plunged. The day saw the biggest loss on the FTSE 100 since 1987.
Ah, say the experts, but that was only because Darling had failed to say what the money men needed to hear. He came up with no specifics and, what's more is deemed weak, still in Gordon Brown's shadow and too uninspiring a communicator to persuade the neurotic men of the markets of anything.
But there is a flaw in this conventional wisdom. Look at what happened across the Atlantic. There Hank Paulson, admired as a muscular treasury secretary, fully the master of his brief, took the most decisive action possible. No half-measures, but a $700bn bail-out aimed at mopping up the bad debts of every lender in the land. This was not the pale, pink socialism of Northern Rock or Bradford & Bingley: this was red-blooded Bolshevism, seizing the commanding heights of the financial system. You gotta love the Americans: if they do something, they do it big.
Sure, it fell at the first hurdle, defeated in the House of Representatives, but it passed eventually. And yet, did it pacify the markets? Did it persuade them that this problem was at last under control, thereby replenishing the supply of the only commodity that has actually run out during this crisis - given that there is no sudden shortage of oil or food - namely, confidence? It did not. The Dow Jones responded to the passage of the US rescue plan not by sighing with relief and declaring the trouble nearly over, but by shrugging its shoulders - and falling. That is a grim warning to Brown and Darling: whatever drastic action comes this morning might not end the turmoil.
It's as if nothing the politicians can do is good enough. If they plug one hole in the dyke, water springs out of another. Guarantees are offered to savers in one bank or even in one country, immediately spooking those who aren't similarly covered. Even if the government in Britain did move to guarantee all bank savings, might not the panic simply move to the building societies? And once they had been dealt with at enormous cost, what's to say the insurance companies would not be next to feel the contagion of collapsed confidence?
The result is that politicians seem dwarfed by the scale of the current crisis, either unable to act decisively at all - witness the statement of European finance ministers yesterday, agreeing on not much more than a "coordinated framework" for consideration of the problem - or to act decisively enough.
It's tempting to think this is a function of the quality of our leaders. If only an FDR was around, we say to ourselves, he would surely know what to do just as he knew how to steer America through the Great Depression. And yet that might be unfair on the current generation of politicians.
The reality is that in the balance of politics and the market, the scales tipped towards the moneymen a long time ago. The acclaimed historian of the postwar period, David Kynaston, describes as a "fundamental revolution" the breakdown of the old Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, ending the fixed exchange rates that had held since 1945. Once those rates could float, we entered the era of "footloose markets": finance could go anywhere and national governments could only look on helplessly. "The politicians had their confidence battered," says Kynaston.
In Britain, Black Wednesday in 1992 added to the politicians' timidity. New Labour, then in embryo, watched as the Major government tried and failed to control financial events, pouring money into the system, raising interest rates twice in one day - and all to no avail. Gordon Brown learned the lesson all too well: there were limits to what politicians can do.
Now that impotence is on clear display and it is spreading alarm around the world. For people desperately want someone to get a grip. The left has been warning for years that corporations now enjoy more power than nation states, but never has it been clearer than it is now. The realisation is dawning that this is not just a financial or economic crisis, but a democratic crisis - the people and their representatives have little or no control over what affects them directly.
The solution is surely for governments to realise that if they are weak, the high priests of high finance are even weaker. The politicians should provide the help the banks need, but with the tightest of strings attached, regulating finance so closely that it can never again gorge itself the way it has these past few years.
Democracy has to assert itself once more - and tame this beast.
Jonathan FreedlandWednesday October 8 2008The Guardian
Is it time to stash the tinned soup and bottled water in the cellar, along with a shortwave radio and a dagger, just in case? Just where, exactly, is this financial crisis going to end - with the collapse of the entire banking system, plunging London into a Mad Max purgatory of burnt-out cars and howling dogs, as survivors of the disaster stab each other for a last hunk of bread?
You won't hear Robert Peston predicting that on the Today programme. But when the air is filled with talk of meltdowns and crashes, when 40% is wiped off the value of two of Britain's largest banking groups in a single day, as it was yesterday, you find yourself wondering. Not least because no one can offer certain reassurance of anything. In the past few weeks, actions once considered unimaginable have happened. There was a time when to suggest that a British government would nationalise not one but two high-street banks would have had you certified as a hopeless leftist fantasist. Now public ownership has become the norm, with the City itself and a former Conservative chancellor demanding more of it and fast.
"Everyone knows they're going to have to do it," Ken Clarke said yesterday of the proposed recapitalisation plan, expected to be part of the government package announced this morning and which would see the taxpayer buy a stake in the Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds TSB: "Get on with it."
Now nothing seems impossible. Those rapidly emptying out their accounts are doing so because they can imagine the banks crashing to the ground, taking their life-savings with them. I spoke with one financial adviser whose phone has grown hot with clients wondering whether they should move their money to Ireland. "But what if the Irish banks collapse?" he tells them. "Would Ireland really have enough money to reimburse all those depositors?" Once it seemed ridiculous to suggest a national banking system going bust. Now it's possible that an entire country could go bankrupt: look at Iceland, forced yesterday to phone Moscow begging for a loan. It's enough to make you want to shove your cash in a piggy bank, hide it under the mattress - then pull the duvet over your head and hope it all goes away.
The instinctive response to such a situation - not that anyone under 80 has lived through anything comparable - is to look for someone to fix it. And that someone means the government.
And yet, up till last night at least, the politicians had been floundering. Alistair Darling addressed the House of Commons on Monday in order to calm the markets and reassure the nation. Yet, as yesterday's Guardian front-page graphic cruelly illustrated, his words had precisely the opposite effect. In the 11 minutes it took him to promise that he would do "whatever it takes" to keep the financial ship afloat, the markets plunged. The day saw the biggest loss on the FTSE 100 since 1987.
Ah, say the experts, but that was only because Darling had failed to say what the money men needed to hear. He came up with no specifics and, what's more is deemed weak, still in Gordon Brown's shadow and too uninspiring a communicator to persuade the neurotic men of the markets of anything.
But there is a flaw in this conventional wisdom. Look at what happened across the Atlantic. There Hank Paulson, admired as a muscular treasury secretary, fully the master of his brief, took the most decisive action possible. No half-measures, but a $700bn bail-out aimed at mopping up the bad debts of every lender in the land. This was not the pale, pink socialism of Northern Rock or Bradford & Bingley: this was red-blooded Bolshevism, seizing the commanding heights of the financial system. You gotta love the Americans: if they do something, they do it big.
Sure, it fell at the first hurdle, defeated in the House of Representatives, but it passed eventually. And yet, did it pacify the markets? Did it persuade them that this problem was at last under control, thereby replenishing the supply of the only commodity that has actually run out during this crisis - given that there is no sudden shortage of oil or food - namely, confidence? It did not. The Dow Jones responded to the passage of the US rescue plan not by sighing with relief and declaring the trouble nearly over, but by shrugging its shoulders - and falling. That is a grim warning to Brown and Darling: whatever drastic action comes this morning might not end the turmoil.
It's as if nothing the politicians can do is good enough. If they plug one hole in the dyke, water springs out of another. Guarantees are offered to savers in one bank or even in one country, immediately spooking those who aren't similarly covered. Even if the government in Britain did move to guarantee all bank savings, might not the panic simply move to the building societies? And once they had been dealt with at enormous cost, what's to say the insurance companies would not be next to feel the contagion of collapsed confidence?
The result is that politicians seem dwarfed by the scale of the current crisis, either unable to act decisively at all - witness the statement of European finance ministers yesterday, agreeing on not much more than a "coordinated framework" for consideration of the problem - or to act decisively enough.
It's tempting to think this is a function of the quality of our leaders. If only an FDR was around, we say to ourselves, he would surely know what to do just as he knew how to steer America through the Great Depression. And yet that might be unfair on the current generation of politicians.
The reality is that in the balance of politics and the market, the scales tipped towards the moneymen a long time ago. The acclaimed historian of the postwar period, David Kynaston, describes as a "fundamental revolution" the breakdown of the old Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, ending the fixed exchange rates that had held since 1945. Once those rates could float, we entered the era of "footloose markets": finance could go anywhere and national governments could only look on helplessly. "The politicians had their confidence battered," says Kynaston.
In Britain, Black Wednesday in 1992 added to the politicians' timidity. New Labour, then in embryo, watched as the Major government tried and failed to control financial events, pouring money into the system, raising interest rates twice in one day - and all to no avail. Gordon Brown learned the lesson all too well: there were limits to what politicians can do.
Now that impotence is on clear display and it is spreading alarm around the world. For people desperately want someone to get a grip. The left has been warning for years that corporations now enjoy more power than nation states, but never has it been clearer than it is now. The realisation is dawning that this is not just a financial or economic crisis, but a democratic crisis - the people and their representatives have little or no control over what affects them directly.
The solution is surely for governments to realise that if they are weak, the high priests of high finance are even weaker. The politicians should provide the help the banks need, but with the tightest of strings attached, regulating finance so closely that it can never again gorge itself the way it has these past few years.
Democracy has to assert itself once more - and tame this beast.
segunda-feira, 6 de outubro de 2008
Cidadãos diplomatas
RACINE, Wis., Oct 06, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- To dramatically improve international relations throughout the world, the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy (U.S. Center) announced today a National Presidents' Initiative for Citizen Diplomacy. The National Presidents' Initiative was launched as a result of discussions by 40 U.S. leaders, associated with more than 90 organizations in international affairs, who attended a Leadership Forum on Citizen Diplomacy. A National Presidents' Initiative Steering Committee plans to meet with members of the U.S. Center's Board, forum participants, nationally recognized leaders in foreign affairs, members of Congress, members of the new administration's transition team on foreign policy, and with the president-elect in early December to discuss this strategic plan and its implementation. The Leadership Forum, co-sponsored by the Johnson Foundation, convened October 1-3, 2008, at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin.
"Polls and studies document that anti-American sentiment around the globe is dangerously high, growing to unprecedented levels. In an era of increasing interdependence, more and more people develop their most lasting impressions from face-to-face, personal encounters with people visiting the U.S. or when Americans travel abroad," said Former Ambassador Mark Johnson, V.P. of the U.S. Center's Board of Directors and facilitator at the Leadership Forum. "Restoring America's global image demands the active engagement of American citizens in a dramatic expansion of citizen diplomacy. Implementation of the National Presidents' Initiative, increasing our capacity to reach out, will be a powerful force in defining the U.S. to the rest of the world."
The National Presidents' Initiative will be a "Call to Action" to energize and motivate Americans to become citizen diplomats, dramatically increasing the number of Americans, of all ages, who are actively engaged globally to strengthen America's international relationships. The strategic plan includes the expansion of existing citizen diplomacy efforts and identifies bold new, innovative opportunities to engage all Americans globally through education, business, volunteer service, community-based initiatives, professional exchange, arts & humanities programs, sports, development assistance or international travel.
Harriet Fulbright, President of the J. William & Harriet Fulbright Center and U.S. Center Board member said, "President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the importance of citizen diplomacy more than 50 years ago when he convened the People to People Conference in 1956. Today, we must redefine citizenship for the 21st century. All Americans can be a driving force in improving international relations, working across cultures to ensure global political and economic stability."
The U.S. Center, based in Des Moines, Iowa, is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization established in 2006 to promote opportunity for all Americans to become citizen diplomats of the highest order, for their communities and for their country. To advance its mission, the U.S. Center invited leaders with extensive backgrounds in all facets of international engagement, in both public and private sectors, business, education and non-profit international organizations to the Leadership Forum.
For more information on the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, visit http://www.uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org. Contact: Marisol Molstre
Phone: 515-282-7145
m.molstre@essmanassociates.com
Denise Essman
Phone: 515-282-7145
d.essman@essmanassociates.com
SOURCE U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy
"Polls and studies document that anti-American sentiment around the globe is dangerously high, growing to unprecedented levels. In an era of increasing interdependence, more and more people develop their most lasting impressions from face-to-face, personal encounters with people visiting the U.S. or when Americans travel abroad," said Former Ambassador Mark Johnson, V.P. of the U.S. Center's Board of Directors and facilitator at the Leadership Forum. "Restoring America's global image demands the active engagement of American citizens in a dramatic expansion of citizen diplomacy. Implementation of the National Presidents' Initiative, increasing our capacity to reach out, will be a powerful force in defining the U.S. to the rest of the world."
The National Presidents' Initiative will be a "Call to Action" to energize and motivate Americans to become citizen diplomats, dramatically increasing the number of Americans, of all ages, who are actively engaged globally to strengthen America's international relationships. The strategic plan includes the expansion of existing citizen diplomacy efforts and identifies bold new, innovative opportunities to engage all Americans globally through education, business, volunteer service, community-based initiatives, professional exchange, arts & humanities programs, sports, development assistance or international travel.
Harriet Fulbright, President of the J. William & Harriet Fulbright Center and U.S. Center Board member said, "President Dwight D. Eisenhower recognized the importance of citizen diplomacy more than 50 years ago when he convened the People to People Conference in 1956. Today, we must redefine citizenship for the 21st century. All Americans can be a driving force in improving international relations, working across cultures to ensure global political and economic stability."
The U.S. Center, based in Des Moines, Iowa, is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization established in 2006 to promote opportunity for all Americans to become citizen diplomats of the highest order, for their communities and for their country. To advance its mission, the U.S. Center invited leaders with extensive backgrounds in all facets of international engagement, in both public and private sectors, business, education and non-profit international organizations to the Leadership Forum.
For more information on the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, visit http://www.uscenterforcitizendiplomacy.org. Contact: Marisol Molstre
Phone: 515-282-7145
m.molstre@essmanassociates.com
Denise Essman
Phone: 515-282-7145
d.essman@essmanassociates.com
SOURCE U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy
Chavez d' Ouro
No 'Jornal Notícias' de 5 Outubro
O Presidente venezuelano, Hugo Chávez afirmou, este domingo, que o seu país criará um "sistema financeiro próprio" em conjunto com "países aliados" como o Irão, Rússia, Bielorússia e China, e o apoio do líder cubano Fidel Castro.
Esta dita "arquitectura financeira" venezuelana permitiu ao país resguardar-se da crise financeira mundial, assegurou Chávez, durante uma visita a duas plataformas petroquímicas em construção no Estado de Carabobo.
"Erguemos o nosso próprio sistema de finanças interno, externo e mundial", através da promoção de sociedades económicas com os citados "países aliados", declarou Chávez, afirmando-se defensor do "socialismo do século XXI".
O líder venezuelano referiu que a aliança com aqueles estados baseia-se na constituição de fundos milionários e bancos bi-nacionais, que nada têm a ver com instituições financeiras internacionais, e que dotam com recursos projectos e empresas bi-nacionais em áreas "estratégicas" como energia, alimentação e indústria.
"Temos uma arquitectura financeira mundial estável. O nosso capital provém da recuperação da venda do petróleo, que era roubada pelos governos anteriores", declarou Chávez.
O governante citou como exemplo desta "arquitectura financeira" o fundo bi-nacional que a Venezuela tem com a China, constituído o ano passado com um capital de 6.000 milhões de dólares e que será elevado até aos 12.000 milhões, assinado por Caracas e Pequim durante a visita do Chefe de Estado venezuelano à China, há duas semanas.
Também, a próxima criação de um banco bi-nacional entre a Venezuela e o Irão, que "quiçá chamemos 'Caixa de Valores Chávez-Ahmadinejad", disse entre risos, o Presidente Chávez.
O Presidente venezuelano, Hugo Chávez afirmou, este domingo, que o seu país criará um "sistema financeiro próprio" em conjunto com "países aliados" como o Irão, Rússia, Bielorússia e China, e o apoio do líder cubano Fidel Castro.
Esta dita "arquitectura financeira" venezuelana permitiu ao país resguardar-se da crise financeira mundial, assegurou Chávez, durante uma visita a duas plataformas petroquímicas em construção no Estado de Carabobo.
"Erguemos o nosso próprio sistema de finanças interno, externo e mundial", através da promoção de sociedades económicas com os citados "países aliados", declarou Chávez, afirmando-se defensor do "socialismo do século XXI".
O líder venezuelano referiu que a aliança com aqueles estados baseia-se na constituição de fundos milionários e bancos bi-nacionais, que nada têm a ver com instituições financeiras internacionais, e que dotam com recursos projectos e empresas bi-nacionais em áreas "estratégicas" como energia, alimentação e indústria.
"Temos uma arquitectura financeira mundial estável. O nosso capital provém da recuperação da venda do petróleo, que era roubada pelos governos anteriores", declarou Chávez.
O governante citou como exemplo desta "arquitectura financeira" o fundo bi-nacional que a Venezuela tem com a China, constituído o ano passado com um capital de 6.000 milhões de dólares e que será elevado até aos 12.000 milhões, assinado por Caracas e Pequim durante a visita do Chefe de Estado venezuelano à China, há duas semanas.
Também, a próxima criação de um banco bi-nacional entre a Venezuela e o Irão, que "quiçá chamemos 'Caixa de Valores Chávez-Ahmadinejad", disse entre risos, o Presidente Chávez.
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