This page is not longer updated regularly with the latest information on the financial crisis and moves towards reforms of the international financial architecture. This is the content as of 6 March 2009, which has been left here for archive purposes.
- Latest news on the official processes, including the G20 and UN.An Alternative London Summit is scheduled to take place on April 1st at the Docklands campu of the University of East London, one day before the official summit.
The G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors have met in Rome on February 14. As the meeting was mainly to prepare the G20 summit, very little was agreed on. Read more.
Details are beginning to emerge on the four working groups formed to report to the G20 on issues of financial regulation, IMF and World Bank reform. Each group is co-chaired by one representative from an emerging economy and one from an industrialised economy. The Working Groups will report to Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors when they meet on 14th March in the UK.
- Latest information on civil society activities.New: 15 December, UK seminar on developing joint policy responses to the financial and economic crisis, hosted by SOAS Research on Money and Finance group with Bretton Woods Project and BOND
Latest intelligence
In Update 64 we renewed our focus on the IFI’s and the financial crisis
- Is the G20 willing to deliver the needed overhaul of international financial institutions?
- The IMF continues to make crisis loans with heavy conditionality that may adversely impact on the poor.
- The World Bank increases lending, but critics continue to attack the Bank’s lending practices, including its controversial use of conditionality.
- The IFC is also increasing lending, but there are questions about the likely development impact and implementation of environmental and social safeguards.
- The financial crisis lead to a resurgence of the IFIs in Latin America.
- The At Issue highlights what key issues need to be addressed at a second UN monetary and financial conference.
Update 63 was a special issue on the IFI’s and the financial crisis
- Commentary on the G20 process
- The financial and economic crises have brought out a plethora of ideas for reforming the international financial architecture, we highlight a few of the many different blueprints.
- National and international financial bodies frequently overlap both in function and membership. In most, the IMF is a participant, and in some, a central player.
- In our At issue, Paulo dos Santos of the University of London argues that rather than coming out of the blue, the path to the financial crisis was laid by financial sector privatisation. liberalisation and deregulation
Other Useful Links
- Official website for the London Summit
- Alternative London Summit
- SOAS RMF (research group on money and finance) Blog
- Vox Eu: Global Crisis Debate
- UN Commission on Financial Reforms
- The need of the hour is Bretton Woods II
- Clear out time for the IMF, World Bank
- Guardian online page on a new Bretton Woods