From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM FINANCEnational policies from developing-country governments to regulatecapital flows in the interest of their long-term development. Theextraordinary ingenuity of the rich world’s ‘financial engineers’(amply demonstrated in multiple corporate scandals) should beredirected into coming up with reasonable forms of national andinternational taxation that can generate funds for development, withoutdoing serious damage to the economy.Reform must also address the opaque nature of the currentinternational financial architecture, giving citizens and poor-countrygovernments a far greater say in its workings through a combinationof transparency and greater democracy in decision-making. To curbthe extreme volatility of capital flows will be politically difficult, asvolatility has acquired its own constituency in the shape of powerfulfinancial institutions which profit from the daily surges of capitalmarkets. But the alternative is that an increasingly uncontrollableworld of international finance will destabilise governments, drive upinequality, and precipitate deeper and more frequent financial crises.317