As the G-20 meets in Pittsburgh, a new report from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch warns that the World Trade Organization has long advanced extreme financial deregulation under the guise of trade agreements and could undermine the current push for increasing regulation. We speak to Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.
Guest:
Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.
JUAN GONZALEZ: World leaders from the Group of Twenty countries are expected to announce today that the G-20 will permanently replace the Group of Seven and Eight as the permanent global council for economic cooperation. The shift would give economies like China, India, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and South Africa a greater say in global economic issues. A draft communiqué also revealed that G-20 leaders have agreed to make the International Monetary Fund more representative by increasing the voting power of the so-called developing countries, which currently only have 43 percent of votes.
Speaking on the eve of the summit Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called for higher regulatory standards.
TIMOTHY GEITHNER: As you know, the United States Congress has a very aggressive schedule to legislate sweeping changes to our financial system that are going to make—provide greater protection for consumers and investors to create a more stable financial system and to try to make sure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook in the future to bear the burdens of financial crises. But we can’t do this alone. If we continue to allow risk and leverage to migrate where standards are weakest, the entire US global financial system will be less stable in the future. We need to see competition for stronger standards, not weaker standards.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Shortly before leaving for the G-20, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged her colleagues at the forum to focus on financial regulation.
CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL: [translated] Pittsburgh will be decisive in determining whether the subject of financial market regulation continues to be a central issue. For us, it is the most important subject at the meeting.
JUAN GONZALEZ: How far will the G-20 go on the regulation of financial markets? Well, a draft communiqué from the G-20 also suggests an effort to conclude the long-running world trade talks in Doha as quickly as possible. A report from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch warns that the World Trade Organization has long advanced extreme financial deregulation under the guise of trade agreements and could undermine the current push for increasing regulation.
For more on this, we’re joined from Pittsburgh by Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Lori.
LORI WALLACH: Good morning.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, tell us about your sense of what will happen in terms of financial regulation.
LORI WALLACH: There’s an incredible contradiction, where the summit communiqué is going to, on one hand, talk about regulating finance, and at the same time, they’re going to talk about adopting the Doha WTO expansion, and a huge part of that agreement is deregulating finance.