Press Report Europe WSF 2009 - OpenFSM!

Press Report Europe WSF 2009
The week-long gathering near the mouth of the Amazon river drew up to 100,000 people, including indigenous tribes and
five regional heads of state. All offered a critique of western-led globalisation.
The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, one of a new wave of leftist leaders, said the neo-liberal idealogues in Davos
had failed. "They are the ones responsible for the crisis. They are not the ones to give us lessons."
With Paraguay's bishop-turned-president, Fernando Lugo, Correa led an audience in an ebullient chorus of songs,
including Comandante Che Guevara, a tribute to the Argentinian revolutionary.
Bolivia's Evo Morales, the Andean country's first Aymara president, said social movements must ensure priviliged elites
no longer accumulate capital without considering the human cost.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist, has previously attended Davos but this year
shunned it for Belem and brought with him a dozen cabinet ministers.
His government would invest in industry to create jobs rather than throw public money at banks as Europe and the US
had done, he said. "I believe the crisis is much more severe. We don't know how deep it will go."
Latin America still winces at the painful humiliation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ordering austerity
measures in the 1980s and 90s. "Now, I expect the IMF to go to [the US president, Barack] Obama and tell him how to
fix the economy," said Lula.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/30/world-social-forum-latin-america?
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‘Green paper gold’ could provide a much-needed fscal stimulus while protecting the planet
from climate change (the guardian)
Brendan Smith, Tim Costello and Jeremy Brecher
The Guardian, 5 February 2009
As the rag-tag army of social movement activists, NGO representatives and other advocates from global civil society
wend their way home from the Amazonian city of Belem, Brazil, and the World Social Forum (WSF), they have reason to
believe they have won the debate on globalisation. Global economic catastrophe and global climate catastrophe have
demonstrated to people the world over – including the new president of the United States – that unfettered capitalism is
leading to unfettered disaster.
Yet to many ears, the WSF’s rallying cry “Another world is possible” sounds like a hollow slogan. However compelling
their critique, does this motley crew really have anything worthwhile to propose to address the ills of globalisation?
Perhaps. Consider one concrete proposal:
There is growing international support for fighting global economic stagnation and global warming simultaneously with a
“green New Deal”. Investing to cut greenhouse gases can create “green jobs” and provide fiscal stimulus while protecting
the planet. But how is it going to be paid for? The answer: green paper gold.
In 1969, national governments gave the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the right to create Special Drawing Rights
(SDRs), often referred to as “paper gold”. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz says that SDRs are “a kind of global
money, issued by the IMF, which countries agree to accept and exchange for dollars or other hard currencies”.
Stiglitz has proposed that paper gold be issued for investment in “global public goods” such as health initiatives and
humanitarian assistance. Today, with trillions of dollars sloshing around the world bailing out the financial sector and
ailing industries, it is time to direct a portion of this money to create “green gold” to help finance a global war on climate
change.
Surely nothing could better qualify as a global public good than saving the planet from ruinous climate change. And at the
same time, this green gold could provide some of the stimulus needed to move the global economy out of its deepening
stagnation. It would help pay for energy conservation, mass transit, research, development and investment in sustainable
energy, technology transfer to low-income countries and climate change adaptation.
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