I am sure that there is no need to remind you of the outcomes of previous Climate Change Conferences.
They all failed.
In the vain hope that any one of you might read this:
HERE IS THE REASON WHY and THE SOLUTION.
The debates that are likely to dominate the Paris talks will not be about emissions but about – Money.
If nations can meet and agree equitable goals on the climate, on economic development, on social and environmental issues, and do so in a spirit of cooperation, this alone will be a huge achievement.
That as you know this is hoping for a “miracle.”
We already know that the commitments made, and likely to be made by December, will not by themselves be enough to hold the world to no more than 2C of warming.
So far, countries have made formal emissions pledges. They cover more than 65 percent of current global emissions. The pledges vary. Some are absolute targets expressed as tons of carbon dioxide per year in 2030; others are targets measured against business as usual, or promises to reduce emissions for every dollar of economic activity.
The EU is to cut its emissions by 40%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2030. The US is to cut its emissions by 26% to 28%, compared with 2005 levels, by 2025. China is to agree that its emissions will peak by 2030.
Nations responsible for about two-thirds of global emissions have come up with their targets known in the UN jargon as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs – but some countries, most notably India.
Are the current pledges enough to keep global warming below 2 degrees C?
Nobody can be certain.
Serious doubts remain as to whether these promised cuts will be nearly enough to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
There are too many scientific uncertainties about exactly how sensitive the atmosphere is to growing concentrations of greenhouse gases. We could get lucky, but equally there might be tipping points that could suddenly accelerate warming.
In the Unite Nations own words it is attaching a set of “sustainable development goals,” on to the Conference which will take over from the millennium development goals that were pegged to 2015.
These will include issues such as access to clean water and sanitation, access to energy, gender equality, education and health. ” Those SDGs will have a profound effect on whether the world can meet its climate change targets, and meet them in an equitable fashion that allows poor countries to lift their citizens out of poverty while not passing climate thresholds.”
While these United Nations aspirations are essential Climate Change has to tackled without interference.
Poor nations want all the money to come from rich country governments, but those governments are adamant that they will not provide such funding solely from the public purse. They want international development banks, such as the World Bank, to play a role, and they want most of the funding to come from the private sector.
There is strong disagreement over how this should be done.
At Copenhagen, where the finance part of the deal was only sorted out at the very last-minute, rich countries agreed to supply $30bn ($20bn) of “fast-start” financial assistance to the poor nations, and they said that by 2020, financial flows of at least $100bn a year would be provided.
These pledges are already backsliding.
This is a hugely contentious issue:
Why because any core agreement, will be contested over issues such as “loss and damage”, by which developing countries want assistance on coping with extreme weather events, likely to be made worse by climate change. An agreement on this is still possible.
African countries, and others with little or no responsibility for climate change, want a separate fund to compensate them for “loss and damage” resulting from climate disasters such as extreme heat, wild weather, floods, and droughts. This would be a 21st century equivalent of war reparations — for climate crimes rather than war crimes.
This will be one of the main obstacles to a Paris deal.
While you as a negotiator will be mired in the paragraphs, sub-headings and addenda of texts thick with square brackets denoting unresolved issues, heads of government have the power to sweep aside such details and order them to agree.
What can we expect before Paris?
Most delegates believe that funding issues are the most likely deal breakers in Paris.
That would be bad for the world.
So here is the solution:
Make Profit for Profit Sake Pay;
By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new drilling and mining Licences.
A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development and Climate Change.
This would create a perpetual Funded Fund to contributed to rectifying the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.Greed.
There will be one further week of negotiations, in October, before the Paris meeting agrees, so there is much work to be done on the software to make this possible.
He who knows it not and can no longer wonder no longer feel
amazement is a good as dead.
“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” Unknown.
Awe can rock our world, making us reassess our beliefs and revise our theories of how things work.
What may sometimes appear to be devious or deceptive, is, in the end mysterious, and (almost?) magical.
Wonder is the accidental impetus behind our greatest achievements.
There in may lie the power of priests, doctors, politicians, psychoanalysts, and, (dare we say it?) teachers.
We are creatures of boundless curiosity.
For example: To think or speculate curiously; To be filled with admiration, amazement, astonishment, or awe; To doubt; something strange and surprising; producing puzzlement or curiosity; the reverse of what might be expected are disappearing down a Smart Phone or a Google Search.
These days everything is awesome.
We marvel at mundane everyday experiences and not objects that evoke mystery, doubt, and uncertainty.
For most city-dwellers, the night sky is merely a murky orange haze. We are becoming estranged from natural sources of awe with electronic media becoming the only source of awe.
One can’t say when, in our evolutionary history, our ancestors first got blown away by something immense or amazing.
SENSE OF WONDER n.
A feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time, as brought on by reading science fiction or standing on the top of Everest.
The sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known, or (Not that I have ever stood on the summit of Everest) the view of the Himalayan peaks.
What do we really desire from our future technologies?
We claim that just as in life, it should assist us in solving problems and improving our everyday efficiency. However, we could further argue that technology also must prompt us to think, be curious, and wonder.
If we fail or, worse yet, ignore this vital design space of wonderment for technology, we are almost certainly doomed to live amongst emotionless, servant-like, lifeless, problem solving, scientific systems.
We deserve more.
Feelings of wonderment are difficult to measure and nearly impossible to assign a value. Nonetheless, these episodes are part of our lives and as such deserve a place within the discussion of our future digital technologies.
We still need to understand how conviction and belief actually arise in a human being.
How far have I walked today? How many people have ever sat on that bench? Does that woman own a cat? Did a child or adult spit that gum onto the sidewalk? These are all feelings of what we call “wonderment” that color and enrich our lives.
Step back with me for a moment. What really matters?
Everyday life spans a wide range of emotions and experiences – from improving productivity and efficiency to promoting wonderment and daydreaming.
Our successful future technological tools, the one we really want to cohabited with, will be those that incorporate the full range of life experiences.
We are at an important technological inflection point.
The value of invisibility, but does not make it visible.
It is this important element of human mystery and curiosity that is underrepresented as a design practice for technological interactive systems.
Currently our mobile phones are doomed to live out only short product lifespan. As these fully functional objects fail to satisfy our technological fetishes and trends, they are replaced by I Pads, by Watches, by Glasses, by Virtual Reality.
Changing people’s sense of control can influence the kinds of scientific explanations they prefer: if you feel that you don’t have control, you’ll be more drawn to explanations that promise order and predictability.
People have become more individualistic, more self-focused, more materialistic and less connected to others.
To reverse this trend, I suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water.
While as I have said it is difficult to place quantitative measurements on wonder in terms of enjoyment, benefit, or even improved quality of life, it is indeed a essential element of daily human life.
We need to understand two elements of belief:
Suggestibility and Surrender.
“These are not only elements of religious conviction, they are part and parcel of the experience of learning and teaching, of certainty and persuasion, as much as they are part of various social strategies to modulate and sooth doubt and anxiety, as well as strategies meant to shock and gain influence.” (Frank 1974, Galanter 1993).
Education comes in all different forms and many people believe if they can look up information on their phone, including current news, then they are learning and expanding their mind. So what’s the problem?
Although mobile apps and texting have made our lives easier, some question the impact they’ve having on the relationships we have with one another. The use of texting and Facebook and Twitter and other sites as a form of communication is eroding people’s ability to write sentences that communicate real meaning and inhibit the art of dialogue of the impossible.
We will soon have a generation that has no clue how to read any of the cues of wonderment.
Wonders never cease!
Nine days’ wonder: No wonder: Time works wonders: Gutless wonder: Wonder about: Wonder at: Wonders will never cease: A one-hit wonder: A chinless wonder: Little wonder: Wonder Drugs: Wonder boy.
The sky would have been the most pervasive natural influence of wonder now it’s the Mobil Phone. There ringtones have a private meaning but are a public experience. They are as expressive as the clothing we wear and an obvious extension of our public presentation of self.
Ringtone sales are a $4 billion market worldwide. Now ain’t that awesome.
Wonder is sometimes said to be a childish emotion, one that we grow out of. But that is surely wrong. Wonder might be humanity’s most important emotion.
Wondrous things engage our senses.
Wonder is what leads us to try to understand our world.
Knowledge does not abolish wonder; indeed, scientific discoveries are often more wondrous than the mysteries they unravel.
Wonder, then, unites science and religion, two of the greatest human institutions.
Art, science and religion are all forms of excess; they transcend the practical ends of daily life. Science, religion and art are unified in wonder.
Without wonder, it is hard to believe that we would engage in these distinctively human pursuits.
We needed to master our environment enough to exceed the basic necessities of survival before we could make use of wonder.
Art, science and religion are inventions for feeding the appetite that wonder excites in us. They also become sources of wonder in their own right, generating epicycles of boundless creativity and enduring inquiry.
Each of these institutions allows us to transcend our animality by transporting us to hidden worlds.
In harvesting the fruits of wonder, we came into our own as a species.
Personally I wonder who read this blog.
For those that do:
I leave with a wonder of all time but don’t spend too long contemplating the wonder.
Infinity.
It’s enough to drive anyone mad, as well as a good point at which to bring to an end this blog.
Humans have been decorating themselves with gold since at least 4000 B.C.
According to a 2011 paper in the Journal Nature: meteor bombardment nearly 4 billion years ago brought 20 billion tons of a gold-and-precious-metal-rich space rock to Earth.
Tracing gold’s origin back even further takes us into deep space.
A 2013 study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters found that all of the gold in the universe was likely birthed during the collisions of dead stars known as neutron stars.
Where ever it came from here are some hard facts.
Gold, the 79th element on the Periodic Table of the Elements, one of the more recognizable of the bunch.
Two-thirds of the world’s gold use to be mined in South Africa. It is now ranked sixth amongst gold producing countries.
Seventy-eight percent of the world’s yearly supply of gold is used in jewelry. The rest goes to electronics and dental and medical uses.
The atomic symbol of gold, Au, comes from the Latin word for gold, aurum.
Astronaut helmets come equipped with a visor coated with a thin layer of gold. The gold blocks harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun.
The world’s largest gold crystal is the size of a golf ball and comes from Venezuela. The 7.7-ounce (217.78 grams) crystal is worth about $1.5 million.
In Tutankhamen’s tomb alone they found that his coffin was made from 1.5 tonnes of gold.
Earthquakes can create gold.
The first purely gold coins were manufactured in the Asia Minor kingdom of Lydia in 560 B.C.
You can eat gold.
Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity and is very non-reactive with air, water and most other substances, meaning it won’t corrode or tarnish.
Gold nano particles are the only way some drug can work.
Gold is in our every day language.
If we emptied our bank vaults and jewelry boxes, we’d find no less than 2.5 million tonnes of gold in the world.
The US Geological Surveyestimates there are 52,000 tonnes of minable gold still in the ground and more is likely to be discovered.
She’sbeen as good as gold. He or she is a goldmine of information.
All that glistens is not gold.
He or she has a heart of gold. Sitting on a goldmine. You’re worthyourweight in gold. He or she scoredsomeColumbian Gold. He or She is a “golddigger.” He or he has a heart of gold. Go forthegold. Tickets arelikegolddust. Strikegold.
User-friendly software is worthitsweight in gold.
From 3600 BC to the present day, from deep underground to outer space, gold has been a major factor in the world’s development and economy.
When thinking about the historical progress of technology, we consider the development of iron and copper-working as the greatest contributions to our species’ economic and cultural progress – but gold came first.
Its association with the gods, with immortality, and with wealth itself are common to many cultures throughout the world.
But how did gold come to be a commodity, a measurable unit of value?
Gold, measured out, became money. Gold gave rise to the concept of money itself: portable, private, and permanent.
Gold (and silver) in standardized coins came to replace barter arrangements. The concept of money, (i.e., gold and silver in standard weight and fineness coins) allowed the World’s economies to expand and prosper.
A lot of people think about gold as a percentage of a country’s total reserves.
Between January 2000 and March 2009, central banks reduced their reserve holdings of gold by more than 114 million troy ounces.
You might be surprised to learn that the United States has 70 percent of its reserves in gold. Today, the US has about 8,000 tons.
The Bank of England held 5,485 tonnes of customer gold at the end of February 2014, and 6,240 tonnes of customer gold at the end of February 2013. This meant that between the two-year end dates, end of February 2013 to end of February 2014, the amount of gold in custody at the Bank of England fell by 755 tonnes.
Now only 500,000 bars in the entire London vaults system,500,000 bars = 6,250 tonnes. Gordon Brown sold more than half of Britain’s precious gold bullion at the bottom of the market just before the price of gold started a decade of almost uninterrupted growth.
It was invested in foreign currency interest-bearing assets, 40% in dollars, 40% in euros and 20% in yen.
Meanwhile, China only has about 1 percent of its reserves in gold.
The reason is that a country’s reserves are a mixture of gold and hard currencies, and the currencies can be in bonds or other assets.
The United States doesn’t need other currencies. They print dollars, so why would we hold euros and yen? The U.S. doesn’t need them, so it makes sense that the country would have a very large percentage of its reserves in gold.
China, on the other hand, has greater need for other currencies.
In a money economy, however, you can say that the country’s gold holdings are the real money.
The IMF officially demonetized gold in 1975. The U.S. ended the convertibility of gold in 1971. Gold disappeared “officially” in stages in the mid-1970s. But the physical gold never went away.
Russia has one-eighth the gold of the United States.
Once China gets the right amount of gold, then the cap on gold’s price can come off. At that point, it doesn’t matter where gold goes because all the major countries will be in the same boat. As of right now, however, they’re not, so China has though to catch-up.
So one of my questions for central bankers is, if gold is such a ridiculous thing to have, why are we hanging onto it?
Gold serves as political chips on the world’s financial stage. It doesn’t mean that you automatically have a gold standard, but that the gold you have will give you a voice among major national players sitting at the table.
China feels extremely vulnerable to the dollar. If we devalue the dollar, that’s an enormous loss to them.
China is saying, in effect, “We’re not comfortable holding all these dollars unless we can have gold. it’s going to be a mad scramble to get gold.
China, along with India, leads the world in gold demand.
1999 – First Central Bank Gold Agreement.
The First Central Bank Gold Agreement (CBGA) is agreed. 15 European central banks declare that gold will remain an important element of their reserves and collectively cap gold sales at 400 tonnes per year over next five years.
2004 – Launch of SPDR Gold Shares
The market is transformed by an innovative, secure and easy way to access the gold market. Seven years later SPDR exceeds $55bn in assets under management.
New York Gold Spot Price (24hrs)Oct 26, 2015 at 12:35 EST
Gold Price Per Ounce
$ 1,168.54
∧ 2.09
Gold Price Per Gram
$ 37.57
∧ 0.07
Gold Price Per Kilo
$ 37,569.43
∧ 67.2
The annual worldwide production of gold is something like 50 million troy ounces per year. In other words, all of the gold produced worldwide in one year could just about fit in the average person’s living room!
That means that if you could somehow gather every scrap of gold that man has ever mined into one place, you could only build about one-third of the Washington Monument.
When deciding on a gold jewelry item there are always many different terms that come up. The most popular are Solid Gold, Gold Filled, and Gold Plated. Solid gold is of course an exquisite piece of jewelry. Gold filled is the next level and is an amazing, quality alternative to solid gold. Gold plating is the lower level and these items tend to tarnish and can often times turn the skin green.
Pure gold is so soft, however, that it is rarely ever used to make jewelry. Most jewelry is made from a “gold alloy”.
24K gold is gold in its purest form without any other metal added (though even most 24K gold usually has minute traces of other metals in it. That’s why even fine gold bullion is labeled 99.999% Gold instead of 100% Gold).
Gold can be tested in several different ways. Acid Testing and X-Ray Fluorescence. They both have advantages and disadvantages.
Gold is an elemental metal. This means that pure gold is made up of nothing but gold atoms.
There’s just one problem with humanity’s continued love affair with gold: Getting it out of the ground. About 83 percent of the 2,700 tons of gold mined each year is extracted using a process called gold cyanidation, said Zhichang Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at Northwestern University in Illinois. This process uses cyanide to leach gold out of the rock that holds it. Unfortunately, cyanide is toxic, and the process is anything but environmentally friendly.
In 2013 a bloke named Liu and his colleagues reported in the journal Nature Communications that they’d stumbled upon a way to extract gold from ore with benign starch rather than toxic cyanide.
There is about $130 billion in gold in Fort Knox.
The entire stockpile now weighs 147.3 million troy ounces, which is worth about $130 billion at today’s prices.
The bad news is that the way we use gold is starting to change.
Up to now it has never gone away. It has always been recycled.
“All the gold that has been mined throughout history is still in existence in the above-ground stock. That means that if you have a gold watch, some of the gold in that watch could have been mined by the Romans 2,000 years ago.” The way gold is being used in the technology industry, however, is different. About 12% of current world gold production finds its way to this sector, where it is often used in such small quantities, in each individual product, that it may no longer be economical to recycle it.
In short, gold may be being “consumed” for the first time.
Platinum is even more scarce than gold. Only 3.6 million troy ounces are produced per year.
WE LEFT WITH THE QUESTION WHY DO CENTRAL BANKS HAVE GOLD BARS IN THE VAULT?
It did sweet fanny Adam to stop the financial crash.
It’s a holdover from the old Gold Standards. Gold standard regulation required all banks, including the central bank to hold gold as a regulatory asset.
In the last gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the US in particular had to hold gold to back the dollar. The requirement went away with the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1973, but the gold didn’t.
These days there isn’t any requirement to hold gold. Gold on the Federal Reserve’s book isn’t even held at market prices, it’s marked to a notional statutory value of ~$42.
By the same token, there isn’t any requirement not to hold it.
“So why does anyone hold gold?”
It is expected to retain its value through cataclysmic events. The value of any currency, on the other hand, is dependent of the faith of the government or authority that backs it. The argument is that for some reason foreign markets become suddenly very adverse to take your currency, you should have some other medium of exchange that allow you to finance imports or serve short-term external debt.
All fiat currency is constantly competing with gold for value.
If everyone stopped creating money, and started hoarding gold, the central banks would, by definition be useless and powerless.
The trade-off between holding and selling the gold is different for “anyone” and countries.
Over many centuries, human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts.
Recently, the pace of global integration has dramatically increased.
Unprecedented changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology have given the process new impetus and made the world more interdependent than ever.
All giving rise to the question:
Why is our world in such a mess and our World Organisations so helpless to do anything about it.
The Answer is simple and can be summed up in one Paragraph.
Self Interest, no long-term planning, greed, unsustainable consumption, religion beliefs, drugs, guns, inequality and our out of date reactionary World Organisations which are not funded and have zero power to do anything about it.
At the turn of the Millennium, the atmosphere of optimism at the end of the Cold War and the confidence that globalization would “lift all boats” led to the belief that extreme deprivation could be overcome without any major change in global economic governance.
Now, after two decades of increasing inequalities and having reached or surpassed many of the planetary boundaries identified by science, it is extremely difficult to argue that the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) can be achieved without affecting some privileges of the rich and powerful.
This won’t happen without social and political struggle.
The good news is that the emerging global consensus is not any more on the side of plutocracies.
The Globalization of Politics, of Culture and of Law sweeps away regulation and undermines local and national politics, just as the consolidation of the nation-state swept away local economies, dialects, cultures and political forms.
Globalization may well create new markets and wealth, but it is a source of repression and a catalyst for global movements of social justice and emancipation.
Even as it causes widespread suffering, disorder, and unrest and now threatens the very atmosphere that we all rely on we carry on regardless of its consequences.
It is beyond comprehension, that we all sit in front of our TV, walk about with our Smart phones and worry about personnel satisfaction when the very world we live in is going to rack and ruin.
In the global partnership for development the focus has shifted towards private sector involvement while minimizing the goals for fair trade, debt relief and neglecting the regulation and control of capital movement.
Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely.
As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level are woven together in a complex manner, making it difficult to summarize positive or negative effects.
For example, giving the business sector the key role, being a contributor to job-generating growth. This comes before the adoption of “business-binding human rights standards.
However, it also reflects a new concept for “international partnership for development,” which has been based on the following:
(1) promoting fair trade to help developing nations improve their economic performance and revenues; (2) reconsidering foreign debts, which are consuming large public budget revenues; (3) increasing development aid in quantity and quality (the aid effectiveness track was launched in 2003); (4) speeding up technology transfer to help developing nations overcome the challenges of improving development tools; and (5) addressing the issue of medicines for dangerous illnesses, which is part of commitments by rich nations towards developing ones.
However there is little point to the above if there is no funds to effect the reforms. Why adopt goals at all?
Any systematic effort to answer this seemingly elementary conceptual question has been disturbingly absent in all our World Organisations.
UN reform is endlessly discussed, but there is sharp disagreement on what kind of reform is needed and for what purpose.
UN ‘fit for purpose’, but it is important to ask, ‘whose purpose will it be fit for’?
Funding of all UN system-wide activities is around US$40 billion per year.
While this may seem to be a substantial sum, in reality it is smaller than the budget of New York City, less than a quarter of the budget of the European Union, and only 2.3 per cent of the world’s military expenditures.
We needs to move from ‘Billions’ to ‘Trillions.
Member States have failed to provide reliable funding to the UN system at a level sufficient to enable it to fulfill the mandates they have given it.
With the ongoing financial constraints, it has opened the space for corporate sector engagement.
Increasingly the UN is promoting market-based approaches and multi-stakeholder partnerships as the business model for solving global problems.
Driven by a belief that engaging the more economically powerful is essential to maintaining the relevance of the UN. This practice has harmful consequences for democratic governance and general public support, as it aligns more with power centers and away from the less powerful.
Donors’ priorities are limited to humanitarian intervention to help refugees and victims of wars and conflicts and to dealing with security concerns in countries torn by wars and conflicts.
The UN working methods reflect a bygone era.
The question of how a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within countries can be achieved in formulating and implementing a Post-2015 Sustainability Agenda is overlooked.
The goal to reduce inequality within and among countries, the goal to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns, and the goal to strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for development are all unattainable without funding.
The Post-2015 Agenda will only succeed if these goals include specific and time-bound targets and commitments for the rich that trigger the necessary regulatory and fiscal policy changes.
This will never happen.
The five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States) enjoy the privilege of veto power. This power has been intensely controversial since the drafting of the UN Charter in 1945.
Without the veto privilege. Fifty years later, the debate on the existence and use of the veto continues, reinvigorated by many cases of veto-threat as well as actual veto use.
The UN cannot perform effectively as long as its budget remains tightly constrained.
For all the talk about auditors and oversight bodies, the UN mainly needs cash. Financial reforms must consider new ways to raise funds, including “alternative financing” such as a global system of revenue-raising must be put in place to fund genuinely international initiatives.
There is only one way to achieve this.
By placing a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds acquisitions and on all New Drilling licences Gas/Oil.
The foreign exchange market is the largest market in the world, with an estimated $4 trillion of foreign exchange traded per day (2011).
This means that in less than one year, currency worth 25 times the global GDP is traded.
Of this massive amount, international trade in goods and services, which requires foreign exchange, accounts for only a small percentage ($9 trillion per year) of the total trading.
A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development.
Add High Frequency Trading and SWFs not forgetting Oil and Gas Drilling and you have a perpetual funded UN.
Apart from the potential to tackle inequalities and injustices worldwide, it would trigger decisive action to protect the integrity of our planet, to combat climate change, and put an end to the overuse of resources and ecosystems by acknowledging planetary boundaries and promoting the respect for nature.
This is the only real solution.
Meanwhile exchange rate speculation accounts for at least 80 percent of the global currency market. These speculative movements, which can take place rapidly and unpredictably, threaten to empty central banks’ currency reserves and trigger financial crises such as those in Mexico (1994), East Asia (1997-98), Russia (1998), Brazil (1999), Turkey (2000) and Argentina (2001).
These crises have had far-reaching socio-economic consequences, throwing millions of people into poverty and unemployment.
Unfortunately, social achievements in reality are often fragile particularly for the socially excluded and can easily be rolled back as a result of conflict (as in the case of Ukraine/Syria/ Middle East), of capitalism in crisis (in many countries after 2008) or as a result of wrong-headed, economically foolish and socially destructive policies, as in the case of austerity policies in many regions, from Latin America to Asia to Southern Europe.
In the name of debt reduction and improved competitiveness, these policies brought about large-scale unemployment and widespread impoverishment, often coupled with the loss of basic income support or access to basic primary health care.
More often than not, this perversely increased sovereign debt instead of decreasing it.
In the United States poverty increased steadily in the last two decades and currently affects some 50 million people, measured by the official threshold of US$23,850 a year for a family of four. In Germany, 20.3 percent of the population – a total of 16.2 million people – were affected by poverty or social exclusion in 2013. In the European Union as a whole, the proportion of poor or socially excluded people was 24.5 percent.
Last, but not least, rich countries tend to be more powerful in terms of their influence on international and global policy making and standard setting. Actions by international institutions like the IMF or World Bank are shaped by their governing bodies, whose composition is directly linked to the affluence of member countries.
Similar patterns exist in donor-recipient relationships or in the dynamics of international and/or inter-state negotiations.
The results can be very tangible, as in the case of the creditor-debtor-relationship between Greece and EU and IMF, or rather subtle as sometimes in the voting behavior of smaller actors in the UN Security Council.
If we are to have a global transformation, it would require not only the mobilization of the international community but also a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within the countries of the World. Include fair trade and investment regimes and migration policies, and international financial system reforms; more specifically they include the revision of bilateral and international investment agreements, the creation of a global regulatory framework for transnational corporations, greater flexibility in intellectual property rights protection for developing countries, genuine efforts to combat tax evasion and profit shifting, the creation of a debt workout mechanism for highly indebted countries as well as the reform of existing global economic governance institutions.
Not secret Trade Agreements like the TTP and the TTIP
All countries have responsibilities in this regard, but the rich have a greater responsibility given their capacity, resources and influence in international institutions and economic governance.
A UN study has estimated that about $150 billion per year is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals, including halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, ensuring primary schooling for all children, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
The richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire global population.
Yes, that equation works out to: 85 > 3,000,000,000.
By the end of 2016 the wealthiest 1% to own more than 50% of the world’s wealth
People everywhere want to be free to determine their own future so we must take the profit out of war and profit for profit sake.
The Conclusion can only be:
That unless we the citizens of the Planet demand change nothing or any reform will be possible. We must make profit for profit sake provide the Funds. Take the current Climate Change Conference in Paris. With no funds any agreements to tackle the problem will be worthless.
If you agree: Join me. Get off your rear end and get involved. ( see previous posts.)
Following the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the organization was heavily criticized for its bureaucracy, insufficient financing, regional structure, and staffing profile.
OBTAINING AN INSIGHT INTO THIS ORGANISATION REQUIRES AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE COMPLICATIONS OF NOT ONLY OF WORLD HEALTH AND ALL THAT ENCOMPASSES. BUT THE OVERLAPPING OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE WORLD BANK/ IMF AND DRUGS.
It is impossible to objectively and fairly assess the functioning of WHO as a whole.
It may in fact be impossible to assess WHO’s functioning in individual policy areas in a manner that is objective, fair and just.
Another words since the World Health Organization (WHO) was founded in 1948, the development of many new institutions in the field of health challenges its original vision as the ‘directing and coordinating body on international health work.
In a world with increasing isolation, tension and recourse to violence, it is clear that the Red Cross Red Crescent must champion the individual and community values which encourage respect for other human beings and a willingness to work together to find solutions to community problems.The Movement’s seven Fundamental Principles as they stand today were unanimously adopted in 1965 by the 20th International Conference of the Red Cross.
Its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being. It endeavors to relieve the suffering of individuals, being guided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.
Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.
Health is vitally important for every human being in the world. Global health matters to everyone, not just to those living in developing countries. The Movement is independent.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Since 15 June 2007, the world has been implementing the International Health Regulations (IHR).
WHO evolved from a body principally aimed at the control of infectious diseases to a more holistic approach to the improvement of health characterized in the 1970s by the slogan ‘Health for All.
The International Health Regulations are a legally binding international agreement that govern the roles of the World Health Organization and its Member States around the globe in identifying, sharing information about, and responding to public health events that may have international consequences.
Under Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland in the 1990s a serious attempt was made to refocus WHO and raise its status as a player in the development policy arena, but with mixed success and limited sustainability.
More recently WHO’s chronic financial problems, characterized by excessive dependence on voluntary short-term funding by donors, have precipitated another round of reform.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the body of the United Nations (UN) responsible for directing and coordinating health.
The United Nations’ system is comprised of the UN itself and more than 30 affiliated organizations — known as programs, funds, and specialized agencies — with their own membership, leadership, and budget processes. Many of these Programs and funds overlap each other.
For example.
UNICEF,United Nations Children’s Fund provides long-term humanitarian and development assistance to children and mothers. Recent UNICEF initiatives have included polio immunization for 5.5 million children in Angola when WHO is supposed to be responsible for global vaccination campaigns.
A WORTHY FUND that is giving today’s children a chance to grow into useful and happier citizens, it contributes to removing some of the seeds of world tension and future conflicts.
UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund– UNFPA works on the ground in 140 nations to “ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS is co-sponsored by 10 UN system agencies: UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, the ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank and has ten goals related to stopping and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
As such WHO has come to play a vital role as an actor in the field of international public health and international public health policy. Since its inception in 1947 WHO has been at the forefront of many breakthroughs in the field including, most notably, what has come to be described as one of the greatest humanitarian achievements of the 20th century, the elimination of Smallpox in 1979.
However WHO’s inability to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa has cast doubt on its effectiveness.
Though much of the media attention given to WHO concentrates on its role in controlling and ultimately eliminating infectious disease, WHO’s mandate as you can see from the above is far broader.
The constitution of the World Health Organization entered into force on the 7th April 1948; however the idea of an international (or at least transnational) approach to dealing with matters of health had existed since the middle of the 19th century with efforts centered on combating infectious disease.
As the 20th century progressed, the focus of international health policy broadened.
The constitution of WHO indicates that, by the middle of the 20th century nations were willing to cooperate in a broad range of health-related policy matters. Chapter II, Article 2 of WHO’s constitution lists the twenty-two functions of WHO.
The top six functions are:
Providing leadership on matters critical to health and engaging in partnerships where joint action is needed;
Shaping the research agenda and stimulating the generation, translation and dissemination of valuable knowledge;
setting norms and standards and promoting and monitoring their implementation;
Articulating ethical and evidence-based policy options;
Providing technical support, catalysing change, and building sustainable institutional capacity;
Monitoring the health situation and addressing health trends.
The constitution of the World Health Organization also addresses its structures.
These structures are complex, with three levels of organization at an international level, the World Health Assembly (WHA), comprising representatives of every WHO member state, The Executive board, which comprises members elected by the WHA and The Secretariat composed of WHO’s Director-General and technical and administrative staff.
The constitution also specifies provisions to create regional organizations and “committees considered desirable to serve any purpose within the competence of the organization.
In addition to a continuing focus on infectious disease there are also functions that specifically deal with areas including research, assistance to government and addressing non-infectious disease that had previously been given little attention on the international health policy stage.
The focus of WHO’s work has shifted over time. This is not surprising, considering the broad scope of WHO’s mandate that the organization tends to focus its work around only some of its functions at any given time.
The question is whether WHO member states and its secretariat are asking sufficiently searching questions about WHO’s place in the international system and what might need to be done to put its future on a more secure footing.
WHO is acutely aware of the challenges it faces if it is to remain a relevant actor in international health and second, the direction of WHO’s work for is geared towards meeting the health related Millennium Development Goals.
Before examining WHO’s role in maternal health it is important to understand how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have come to play such a prominent role in shaping WHO’s work.
The MDGs came out of the United Nations Millennium Declaration which was endorsed by 189 countries in September 2000 and resolves to work towards combating poverty, ill-health, discrimination and inequality, lack of education and environmental degradation.
The MDGs are eight specific goals that the 191 United Nations (UN) states have committed themselves to achieving by 2015.
The MDGs goals are:
1. to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
2. to achieve universal primary education;
3. to promote gender equality and empower women;
4. to reduce child mortality;
5. to improve maternal health;
6. to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
7. to ensure environmental sustainability;
8. and to develop a global partnership for development.
These goals are interdependent, progress or lack thereof in achieving one goal will have effects on progress towards achieving the others.
Likewise it is acknowledged that in order to achieve the MDGs goals all sections of the UN system will be required to work together and, more importantly, that the UN alone cannot achieve the MDGs goals.
The MDGs are unique in that they have broad support across the international system. The constituent bodies of the UN and all 191 UN member states are committed to achieving the MDGs.
Achieving the MDGs goals will require the cooperation and action of UN member states and of other international, regional and local governmental and non-governmental organizations.
WHO in particular accepts this to be the case.
WHO’s need to work closely with other UN bodies, states and other actors in the international system is a major theme of WHO’s Eleventh General Programme of Work 2006-2015.
0NCE AGAIN both of these points indicate that WHO is aware of the fact that it cannot function as an independent actor in the international system.
Any action WHO takes must be informed by the actions of other actors in the international system and likewise WHO’s actions impact upon the actions of other actors in the international system.
Enter the World Bank. Who’s major health funder in the 1980s and a proponent of market-based health policies challenged WHO’s pre-eminent position in the field.
Along with regional organizations including the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN) frame, to varying extents, their policies in a variety of areas around the achievement of the MDGs.
Many major international charities such as the Red Cross and OXFAM are focusing their work, again to varying degrees, on achieving the MDGs.
There are also many civil society organizations, operating at local, national, regional and international levels that are engaged with the MDGs.
Considering this broad support it is little wonder that WHO have chosen to focus so heavily on the achievement of the MDGs in the Eleventh General Programme of Work 2006-2015
The 2014/2015 proposed budget of the WHO is about US$4 billion.
About US$930 million are to be provided by member states with a further US$3 billion to be from voluntary contributions.
( As of 2012, the largest annual assessed contributions from member states came from the United States ($110 million), Japan ($58 million), Germany ($37 million), United Kingdom ($31 million) and France ($31 million). The combined 2012–2013 budget has proposed a total expenditure of $3,959 million, of which $944 million (24%) will come from assessed contributions. This represented a significant fall in outlay compared to the previous 2009–2010 budget, adjusting to take account of previous under spends. Assessed contributions were kept the same. Voluntary contributions will account for $3,015 million (76%), of which $800 million is regarded as highly or moderately flexible funding, with the remainder tied to particular programmes or objectives.)
When you consider the value of the Drugs market.
As a result of the pressure to maintain sales, there is now, in WHO’s words, “an inherent conflict of interest between the legitimate business goals of manufacturers and the social, medical and economic needs of providers and the public to select and use drugs in the most rational way”.
The global pharmaceuticals market is worth US$300 billion a year, a figure expected to rise to US$400 billion within three years. The 10 largest drugs companies control over one-third of this market, several with sales of more than US$10 billion a year and profit margins of about 30%. Six are based in the United States and four in Europe.
A similar conflict of interests exists in the area of drug research and development (R&D) particularly in the area of neglected diseases.
The private sector dominates R&D, spending millions of dollars each year developing new drugs for the mass market. The profit imperative ensures that the drugs chosen for development are those most likely to provide a high return on the company’s investment. As a result, drugs for use in the industrialized world are prioritized over ones for use in the South, where many patients would be unable to pay for them.
In a number of cases, international corporations and foundations have contributed drugs or products free of charge to help in disease eradication.
Smith Kline Beecham has made a US$500 million commitment to WHO of its drug albendazole, used to treat lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis).
American Home Products has provided a non-toxic larvicide and the DuPont Company has contributed free cloth water filters for the eradication of guinea-worm disease (dracunculiasis).
The Japanese Nippon Foundation has enabled WHO to supply blister packs containing the drugs needed for multi-drug therapy (MDT) of TB in sufficient quantities to treat about 800 000 patients a year in some 35 countries.
Tomorrow, the World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to officially certify that south-east Asia, formerly one of the regions with the worst levels of polio, has eradicated the disease, after India found new no cases in the previous three years. (The WHO counts India as part of south-east Asia.)
The cost of achieving this has stretched past $10 billion, much of it fronted by donors from wealthy countries that have already eliminated the disease, as the US did in 1979.
For comparison, eliminating smallpox cost $500 million in 2008 dollars.
In 1998, researchers forecast that the eradication of measles in the US by 2010 would save $45 million a year.
Despite official “eradication” in 2000, cases of the measles are growing again thanks to the anti-vaccine movement’s push against immunization.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), the health body of the United Nations (UN), has released a new report stating the huge leaps made in the global fight against malaria. In the space of only 15 years, between 2000 and 2015, the rate of new malaria infections has dropped by approximately 37 per cent, with the global death rate falling by a dramatic 60 per cent during the same period. This means over six million deaths have been prevented since 2000.
“In the last decade of the previous century, malaria was rampant, killing more than one million people every year,” “Today, global malaria control ranks as one of the most successful stories in public health, since the start of the century.” However “Malaria still causes one in ten child deaths in Africa and costs the continent’s economies around £8bn every year.”
There is no doubting that this World Organisation and the work it does is essential to us all.
Being a humanitarian organisation which is much more than just giving people medicine it must recognize that everybody is an individual with a story, with a life, with a right to a future.
It is incapable of achieving this because it has to rely on ( like the United Nations, the World Wildlife Fund, and the United Nations Children’s Fund) insecure sourcing of financing.
A 0.05% World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions would create a perpetual fund that would transform all them.
There seems little point in begging for funds when thinks go wrong.
There has never been a more pressing time for our out of date world organisation to function. Order has broken down in numerous countries. Armed groups and individuals explicitly target girls and women for rape, trafficking, and forced “marriage.” Smugglers sell desperate refugees into slavery. Predators attack the displaced, exploiting their vulnerability. And the consequences, both immediate and long-term, are profound.
This is the first World Organisation in the series of posts that can hold its head up high, because we cannot separate the well-being of people from the well-being of the ecosystems where they live.
World Wildlife Fund was conceived in April, 1961, and set up shop in September, 1961, at IUCN’s headquarters in Morges, Switzerland. H.R.H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands became the organization’s first president.
In its first year, the Board approves five projects totaling $33,500.
TO DAY IT is one of the largest environmental and conservation groups with worldwide affiliates. The panda drawn for the first time in 1961 by Sir Peter Scott, artist and co-founder of WWF, remains until today the organization’s symbol.
Its mission is to use scientific knowledge and advance that knowledge; to “work to preserve the diversity and abundance of life and the health of ecological systems by protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species”; to promote “sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources”; and to promote “efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution.”
In 1973 WWF grants $38,000 to the Smithsonian Institution to study the tiger population of the Chitwan Sanctuary in Nepal.
WWF begins awarding the annual $50,000 Getty Prize for outstanding contributions to wildlife conservation in 1974. The Prize increases to $100,000 in 1999, and now focuses on the education of future conservationists.
During the first three years of its existence, “WWF raised and donated almost US$1.9 million to conservation projects.”
HUMANITY’S FOOTPRINT IS OUTSTRIPPING EARTH’S ABILITY TO PROVIDE
Already, 60% of ecosystem services—things like water supplies, fish stocks and fertile soil— are in decline because of human impacts on the environment.
Already, we need the equivalent of 1½ Earths to meet the demands people make on nature. We are eating into our natural capital, making it more and more difficult to sustain what will be needed by those who come after us.
THE PLANET IS CHANGING. WE ARE TOO. EVERY DAY, THE THREATS FACING THE PLANET BECOME MORE STARK.
TARGETING SPECIFIC PLACES AND SPECIES IS NO LONGER ENOUGH.
Fortunately, making connections—between the health of the planet and the health of humanity, between sustainability and a strong bottom line, between the sources of energy we choose and the water we drink—is one of WWF’s greatest talents.
Today, the WWF International is focused on six global issues, each critical to the health of our world and its inhabitants. The organization’s Web site lists the focus and need for each of the six programs.
The challenge comes in establishing that connectivity in a way that inspires action from people everywhere, on all levels.
ONE IN NINE PEOPLE ON THE PLANET SUFFERS FROM HUNGER.
90% OF THE OCEAN’S FISH STOCKS ARE OVER FISHED OR BEING FISHED TO THEIR LIMITS. AMERICANS CONSUME NEARLY 5 BILLION POUNDS OF SEAFOOD A YEAR NOT TO MENTION JAPAN, SPAIN. OCEANS FEED MORE THAN 1 BILLION PEOPLE. THEY GUIDE US TO ADVENTURE AND CONTEMPLATION, ABSORB CO² , AND HOLD THE PLANET’S GREATEST DIVERSITY OF LIFE.
GLOBALLY, OVER FISHING IS HAVING A DEVASTATING IMPACT ON THE SEA.
WILDLIFE POPULATIONS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE DECLINED BY AN AVERAGE OF 52% OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS.
BY 2030, GLOBAL DEMAND FOR FRESH WATER IS PROJECTED TO EXCEED CURRENT SUPPLY BY MORE THAN 40%.
573 MILLION ACRES OF FOREST WILL BE GONE BY 2050 IF WE DO NOTHING TO STOP DEFORESTATION.
THE CONCENTRATION OF CO² IN THE ATMOSPHERE IN 2013 WAS HIGHER THAN IT HAD BEEN IN AT LEAST 800 THOUSAND YEARS.
FORESTS ARE AT THE HEART OF LIFE ON EARTH. BILLIONS OF ANIMALS, PLANTS AND PEOPLE DEPEND ON THEM. THEY PROTECT OUR WATERSHEDS AND SUPPLY THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE. BETWEEN 46,000 AND 58,000 SQUARE MILES OF FOREST ARE LOST EACH YEAR ROUGHLY EQUIVALENT TO 36 FOOTBALL FIELDS EVERY MINUTE.
FRESH WATER IS CENTRAL TO OUR SURVIVAL. RIVERS, WETLANDS, LAKES AND STREAMS SUPPORT MORE THAN 10% OF ALL KNOWN SPECIES. WATER IS A CONDUIT FOR HEALTH, ENERGY AND FOOD. VIRTUALLY NO FRESHWATER SYSTEM REMAINS UNAFFECTED BY HUMAN ACTIVITIES.
WILDLIFE INSPIRES US. ANIMAL POPULATIONS ANCHOR A WEB OF LIFE THAT IS INTEGRAL TO EVERY HEALTHY ECOSYSTEM ON EARTH. IN THE SPAN OF JUST TWO HUMAN GENERATIONS, HALF OF EARTH’S WILDLIFE HAS DISAPPEARED.
FOOD SUSTAINS AND RENEWS US. ITS CREATION, PRODUCTION, PACKAGING AND TRANSPORT ENCROACH ON NATURE IN HARMFUL WAYS.
IF CURRENT TRENDS CONTINUE,WE WON’T BE ABLE TO REPLENISH THE WORLD’S FOOD SUPPLY FAST ENOUGH TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND.
A HEALTHY CLIMATE IS A PRECARIOUS GIFT. CLIMATE CHANGE IS UPSETTING THE BALANCE THAT PEOPLE AND WILDLIFE NEED TO THRIVE.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Paris is fast approaching—and with it, our best chance to secure meaningful global climate change action. But the decisions that define our day-to-day lives have a huge impact as well.
Now, the 21st century and social media have ushered in a new set of trends. Younger generations respond less to formal affiliation and gravitate to supporting stand-alone causes and initiatives to get things done. The same is true of some sectors of philanthropy. Increasingly, successful individuals, along with foundations and corporations, see giving as a tool to confront and mitigate some of the biggest problems of our day.
Taking into account the above conditions that are currently prevalent to our plants and the consequences to all living creatures, included us, you would think that our World Governments and Large Multinational Corporations would be funding the WWF work and projects.
You would be wrong. It has to beg, steal and borrow.
84% of WWF’s spending is directed to worldwide conservation activities.
(32% of its Funding comes from Individual Contributions, 19% from Government grants & contracts, 19% from in-kind and other revenues, 10% from other/non operating contributions, 9% foundation contributions,7% WWF network revenues and last 4% from corporate contributions.)
There is a lot of room for some corporation like Apple, Microsoft, or Banks to step up to the plate or it could be funded by the establishment of a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, and Drilling Licences. (see previous posts)
(WWF’s FY14 financial performance remained steady, with total revenues and support at $266.3 million. WWF’s programmatic spending represented 84% of total expenses, with management and administration costs accounting for a modest 5% of total expenses. Total net assets of $357.9 million represented a 12% increase over FY13.)
The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20 percent of the world’s population consume 86 percent of the world’s resources while the poorest 80 percent consume just 14 percent.
The WTO began life on 1 January 1995, but its trading system is half a century older.
Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. (The second WTO ministerial meeting, held in Geneva in May 1998, included a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the system.)
The last and largest GATT round, was the Uruguay Round which lasted from 1986 to 1994 and led to the WTO’s creation.
Whereas GATT had mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its agreements now cover trade in services, and in traded inventions, creations and designs (intellectual property).
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization of 161 members that deals with the rules of trade between nations. With Russia’s accession in August 2012, the WTO encompasses all major trading economies.
The work of the IMF and the WTO is complementary.
The WTO Agreements require that it consult the IMF when it deals with issues concerning monetary reserves, balance of payments, and foreign exchange arrangement.
The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution.
The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. The WTO would like you to believe that creating a world of “free trade” will promote global understanding and peace. On the contrary, the domination of international trade by rich countries for the benefit of their individual interests fuels anger and resentment that make us less safe.
WTO rules put the “rights” of corporations to profit over human and labor rights.
It is time that trade was put firmly in its place, so that it is viewed not as a goal in itself but as a means to achieving broader social, environmental and development goals.
At the very least, the world’s richest countries must honour their commitment to tackling their own damaging practices, particularly subsidies that drive down prices and increase poverty for farmers across the world.
Multilateral trade negotiations need fundamental reform, to be based on fair negotiations, not power play, so that developing countries have an equal place at the table. Genuine consultation with civil society in both the global north and south would no doubt produce other proposals for improvement.
If agreement can’t be reached on a small package of measures to help developing countries, as part of development agenda, then the relevance of the WTO and the multilateral trading system must be questioned.
The sad reality is that very often it is not in a business’s financial interests to act ethically. And no amount of persuasion will change that.The point, then, is not so much to persuade businesses that it is in their interests to act ethically and sustainably – they will work that out for themselves – but to make sure that it is.
Which means two things in practice: raising the benefits of acting ethically and sustainably, and raising the costs of not doing so. There are two principal ways, in a democratic capitalist society, of ensuring that the right incentives are in place for a business to act ethically: via the consumer and via the regulator (indirectly influenced by the citizen).
When humans get into big organisations it can be hard to apply moral values, and the incentives of the business context tend to hold sway. Especially when the boardroom is often far from a particular initiative that may be many thousands of miles away.
The big problem is the lack of global level regulation to match our now thoroughly globalised financial system. Such an international regulatory system is very far from being a reality, but if it is needed to guide, enable and sometimes restrict the activities of the financial sector, it is equally needed in other international sectors, from the extractive industries to manufacturing to agricultural trade.
Attempts at getting companies to sign up to voluntary measures (such as the UN Global Compact) are fine, but they are regarded as quaint by the majority of business people.
For every CEO who has a damascene conversion and transforms or builds their business along ethical lines (think Anita Roddick of the Body Shop) there are thousands who don’t. Lip service is paid, the odd children’s playground is built, the business of business goes on.
The point is to change incentives, and voluntary measures don’t do that. Only legal sanction or consumer action is strong enough, and consumer action is too erratic to rely upon.
In a globalised world, national level laws are clearly inadequate. People say international law is impossible, but they say that about everything worth doing. It is not only possible, it is vital, and is the major project of the 21st century. Without it, the global public cannot expect a private sector that works for people, not just for profit.
If you wanted clear evidence of the above just look at the Two trade Agreements recently negotiated The TTIP and TTP.
It would be foolish to assume that the world has entered an “end of crises” stage in its history.
Today, with the Web we should all beware of the challenges facing our existence, but are our World Organisations up to speed.
This series of post examines the biggest and there is none more powerful than this one. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) — yet few know how it works.
It’s the must powerful because the economic and financial linkages which bind us together have brought substantial benefits to people around the world, but they have also had destabilizing effects.
The IMF works actively with the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and other international bodies that share an interest in international trade.
Because we live in an increasingly globalized world and the expansion of the role of markets and their increasing globalization will continue to transform the international economy.
As the Second World War ends, the job of rebuilding national economies begins.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was founded in 1945 on multilateral principles, which stood in sharp contrast to the unilateralism and beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the 1930s.
Also known as the Fund, it was conceived at a United Nations conference convened in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, in July 1944.
The 44 governments represented at that conference sought to build a framework for economic cooperation that would avoid a repetition of the vicious circle of competitive devaluations that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
To Day the IMF’s primary purpose is to ensure the stability of the international monetary system—the system of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries (and their citizens) to transact with each other.
Also to serve three related purposes.
First, it would operate as a forum for multilateral economic cooperation, in recognition of the fact that one country’s policies affect other countries. Second, it would help countries to identify and adopt the macroeconomic policies that would help them to achieve and maintain high levels of employment and real income. Third, the Fund would provide temporary financial support, under appropriate safeguards, to help members address balance of payments difficulties without resorting to measures that could damage national or international prosperity.
The primary source of the IMF’s financial resources is its members’ quotas, which broadly reflect members’ relative position in the world economy.
Currently, total quota resources amount to about SDR 238 billion (about $334 billion).
With its near-global membership of 188 countries, the IMF is uniquely placed to help member governments take advantage of the opportunities—and manage the challenges—posed by globalization and economic development more generally.
The IMF tracks global economic trends and performance, alerts its member countries when it sees problems on the horizon, provides a forum for policy dialogue, and passes on know-how to governments on how to tackle economic difficulties.
However it has difficulty conforming to the new global power balance.
The US holds 16.7 percent of the voting power in the Fund, which gives it an effective veto over any major changes in its structure and activities. China meanwhile has a 3.8 percent voting share, not far from Italy’s, which has an economy one-fifth the size.
Its Managing Director Christine Lagarde is one of the few woman in the world of power.
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Executive Board: 24 Directors representing countries or groups of countries
Staff: Approximately 2,630 from 147 countries
Total quotas: US$334 billion (as of 9/4/15)
Additional pledged or committed resources: US $903 billion
Committed amounts under current lending arrangements (as of 8/27/15): US$164 billion, of which US$145 billion have not been drawn (seetable).
Biggest borrowers (amount outstanding as of 9/3/15): Portugal, Greece, Ukraine, Ireland
Biggest precautionary loans (amount agreed as of 9/3/15): Mexico, Poland, Colombia, Morocco
Since the debt crisis of the 1980’s, the IMF has assumed the role of bailing out countries during financial crises (caused in large part by currency speculation in the global casino economy) with emergency loan packages tied to certain conditions, often referred to as structural adjustment policies (SAPs). It now acts like a global loan shark, exerting enormous leverage over the economies of more than 60 countries.
These countries have to follow the IMF’s policies to get loans, international assistance, and even debt relief. Thus, the IMF decides how much debtor countries can spend on education, health care, and environmental protection.
Unlike a democratic system in which each member country would have an equal vote, rich countries dominate decision-making in the IMF because voting power is determined by the amount of money that each country pays into the IMF’s quota system.
It’s a system of one dollar, one vote.
The U.S. is the largest shareholder with a quota of 18 percent. Germany, Japan, France, Great Britain, and the US combined control about 38 percent.
The disproportionate amount of power held by wealthy countries means that the interests of bankers, investors and corporations from industrialized countries are put above the needs of the world’s poor majority.
The IMF is funded with taxpayer money, yet it operates behind a veil of secrecy.
Members of affected communities do not participate in designing loan packages. The IMF works with a select group of central bankers and finance ministers to make polices without input from other government agencies such as health, education and environment departments.
The institution has resisted calls for public scrutiny and independent evaluation.
IMF loans and bailout packages are paving the way for natural resource exploitation on a staggering scale. It does not consider the environmental impacts of lending policies, and environmental ministries and groups are not included in policy making.
The focus on export growth to earn hard currency to pay back loans has led to an unsustainable liquidation of natural resources. For example, the Ivory Coast’s increased reliance on cocoa exports has led to a loss of two-thirds of the country’s forests.
The IMF routinely pushes countries to deregulate financial systems.
The removal of regulations that might limit speculation has greatly increased capital investment in developing country financial markets. More than $1.5 trillion crosses borders every day. Most of this capital is invested short-term, putting countries at the whim of financial speculators. The Mexican 1995 peso crisis was partly a result of these IMF policies.
When the bubble popped, the IMF and US government stepped in to prop up interest and exchange rates, using taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street bankers. Such bailouts encourage investors to continue making risky, speculative bets, thereby increasing the instability of national economies.
During the bailout of Asian countries, the IMF required governments to assume the bad debts of private banks, thus making the public pay the costs and draining yet more resources away from social programs.
Is the IMF Obsolete?. Several years ago, even asking such a question would have seemed absurd.
Yet today, with the narrowing of risk spreads in an era of increasingly interconnected markets and more efficient risk management, is the IMF’s role still relevant? Has the rise of Asia, with its reliance on self-insurance by reserve accumulation since 1998, shown the Fund the door?
So is it time for it to consolidate merging with the World Bank. But that might make for conflicting irrelevant missions.
The IMF has thrived over the years by constantly reinventing itself to meet the evolving needs of global financial governance.
The United States, European Union, Japan, and China can do pretty much as they please—in terms of fiscal stance, interest rates, or exchange rates—either cooperating or not as suits their tastes.
For the big boys, the IMF can be no better than a scholarly scold.
A useful role, to be sure, but not a task that justifies a staff of thousands.
The IMF has lost a clear sense of mission and purpose, and it has lost the support of many members. Members have built reserves and made other arrangements to avoid borrowing from the IMF.
The new world order needs a credible, independent global institution to guide it, and make all the other entities—such as a revamped (and constantly reforming) G8 and G20—effective.
The IMF should be a natural to lead this new world order, but unfortunately there is no sign they are really seizing the moment.
Never in the history of the world has a bureaucracy on its own shut itself down. Could this be the first time? Should it be?
On the one hand, globalization and the rapid growth of emerging markets allow prosperity to be shared more broadly. On the other, many countries remain mired in poverty. There are also moves worldwide toward stronger regionalism in political, monetary and trade relations. Global trends toward democracy, broader participation in decision-making, and a growing prominence of civil society groups within and across borders have highlighted the importance of participatory process and outreach in decision-making.
With its near universal membership, it is the only organization that maintains regular discussions on economic policies with almost all countries. It has the capacity to conduct comprehensive economic policy analysis at the global, regional and country levels. And its members are committed to providing information and engaging in peer review.
The IMF is the only global multilateral institution that brings officials with monetary and financial responsibilities together to monitor international developments and to respond when problems arise.
It was taken for granted that one of the world’s largest international institutions, and certainly one of its most important, would forever be part of the economic and political landscape.
Now, this isn’t the case.
In the USA Congress has refused thus far to approve the Administration’s request for $18 billion to help replenish the IMF’s resources, which have been severely depleted by the various Asian rescue packages the Fund arranged earlier this year.
A shortage of resources is one reason (but certainly not the only one) why the Fund didn’t offer to provide Russia more money during late summer (after arranging a package in July).
Even if the US Congress eventually approves the $18 billion the acrimonius debate over the IMF’s funding and future this time does not augur well for approval of additional funding in the future.
In 2014, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was established as a rival to the IMF and World Bank.
In July 2014 the BRICS nations (Brazil,Russia,India,China,and South Africa) announced the BRICS CONTINGENT RESERVE ARRANGEMENT (CRA) with an initial size of US$100 billion. A framework to provide liquidity through currency swaps in response to actual or potential short-term balance-of-payments pressures.
Some experts voiced concern that the IMF was not representative, and that the IMF proposals to generate only US$200 billion a year by 2020 with the SDRs as seed funds, did not go far enough to undo the general incentive to pursue destructive projects inherent in the world commodity trading and banking systems—criticisms often levelled at the World Trade Organisation and large global banking institutions.
The greatest amount currently on loan is to Mexico, and then Greece. But when you look at the loan as a percentage of GDP, Liberia then Iceland are the highest with 8.5% and 7.4% respectively.
The greatest amount to be paid back per member of the population is Iceland ($2,828.67 per person) and Ireland ($2,619.14 per person).
The IMF has made €2.5 billion of profit out of its loans to Greece since 2010. If Greece does repay the IMF in full this will rise to €4.3 billion by 2024.
Out of its lending to all countries in debt crisis between 2010 and 2014 the IMF has made a total profit of €8.4 billion, over a quarter of which is effectively from Greece.
All of this money has been added to the Fund’s reserves, which now total €19 billion. These reserves would be used to meet the costs from a country defaulting on repayments. Greece’s total debt to the IMF is currently €24 billion.
The International Monetary Fund is meant to be the firefighter of the world economy. Recently, though, it is China that has responded to the ringing of alarms. First, it lent Argentina cash to replenish its dwindling foreign-exchange reserves. Next, with the rouble crashing, China offered credit to Russia. Then Venezuela begged for funds to stave off a default. Strategic interests dictate where China points its financial hose: these countries supply it with oil and food.
If a government anywhere goes bust, it now has an alternative to the IMF.
Whether the IMF truly benefits the international economy is the subject of considerable debate. Much of the criticism centers on the IMF’s requirements to adopt certain economic policies in order to receive IMF loans, which may encourage poor countries to neglect social concerns in order to comply.
The IMF’s role grows more controversial. It gets a reputation – as a rich bully – bursting into emerging market economies, telling them how to live their life.
If you don’t pay back the IMF, the lender of the last resort to the world, then no one will lend you money. I mean really, no one. Ultimately they paid the IMF in full. Everyone pays. If you want to play in the international economy, if you want to have credit, if you want to have any kind of normal relationship with the outside world, you need to have a normal relationship with the IMF.
Through its notorious structural adjustment programs (SAPs), it has imposed harsh economic reforms in over 100 countries in the developing and former communist worlds, throwing hundreds of millions of people deeper into poverty.
Its fingers and those of the World Bank are all over the (The Trans-Pacific Partnerhsip and The EU trade and investment deal with the US – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – or TTIP.) both of which are quickly becoming the subject of increased interest and criticism. These two trade deals – the former being discussed between the US and Europe, and the latter between the US and Asian nations including Japan and South Korea – stand to change the face of global trade.
This agreement includes Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam to start. Eventually, its advocates hope, it will include every nation on the Pacific rim, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico, Russia, and China.
The TPP is also a profoundly anti-democratic agreement which signs away our right to govern our own economy. Taken to its logical conclusion, this all ultimately amounts to the idea that the profitability of investments must be the supreme priority of state policy–overriding health, safety, human rights, labor law, fiscal policy, macroeconomic stability, industrial policy, national security, cultural autonomy, the environment, and everything else.
Who would fall for a brazen scheme that strengthens protection under the guise of free trade?
You’ve probably heard the old saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
It is the holy grail, the fundamental principle that underpins much of modern economic thinking.
It may be too late to stop the TPP but we need to think beyond the narrow circle of its signatories.
Just to add to the mind-boggling complexity, ask yourself this: If you own a business and want to trade with Japan, should you access the recently inked Australia Japan deal? Or should you go with the TPP?
The TPP is being driven by America. Like most of these deals, it is politically driven. Fearful of China’s rise, America wants to corral its allies under a trade umbrella. In the process, it also wants to further the interests of American corporations and American workers.
It wants copyright laws and patents tightened and extended. These are agreements that offer protection to corporations and investors, usually justified on the grounds that innovation requires a reward not us the people.
When it comes to economic benefits, both of these Agreements can be and will be downright harmful.
The World Bank system was created as an integral element of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system of international and multilateral institutions. The Bank was designed to avoid future world wars by ensuring an open international trading system and global financial stability.
The same as the Nato and the United Nations it is another World Organisation that should be either shutdown, reinvented or amalgamated.
Like the IMF the World Bank is empowered by the governments which control it (led by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy — the “Group of 8,” which holds over 40% of the votes on their boards) with imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.”
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.
According to the World Bank Articles of Agreement, all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment. Here is a dated example.
The first country to receive a World Bank loan was France. The French loan was for US$250 million, half the amount requested, and it came with strict conditions.
France had to agree to produce a balanced budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. Before the loan was approved, the United States State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed. The French government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government. Within hours, the loan to France was approved.
When the Marshall Plan went into effect in 1947, many European countries began receiving aid from other sources. Faced with this competition, the World Bank shifted its focus to non-European countries.
The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors mostly for the personal interest of larger world nations ignoring the like Vietnam because they were communist who were fighting for their lives to reject democracy from running over their country.
To finance more loans, the Bank used the global bond market to increase the capital available to the bank.
One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt.
From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.
During the 1980s, the bank emphasized lending to service Third-World debt, and structural adjustment policies designed to streamline the economies of developing nations.
UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for “reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.”
And it left millions of families poor and children unprotected subject to Mason sponsored Child Sex trafficking.
Beginning in 1989, in response to harsh criticism from many groups, the bank began including environmental groups and NGOs in its loans to mitigate the past effects of its development policies that had prompted the criticism.
It also formed an implementing agency, in accordance with the Montreal Protocols to stop ozone-depletion damage to the Earth’s atmosphere by phasing out the use of 95% of ozone-depleting chemicals, with a target date of 2015.
Less recently, a project in Seychelles to promote local tourism by the name of project MAGIC was launched in 2010. Its successor project TIME was scheduled to be launched in 2012. Nothing more of it was heard of it since and was a project that at least to me makes no sense in its disclosure.
Traditionally, based on a tacit understanding between the United States and Europe, the president of the World Bank has always been selected from candidates nominated by the United States. In 2012, for the first time, two non-US citizens were nominated.
In 1991, the bank announced that to protect against intentional deforestation, especially in the Amazon, it would not finance any commercial logging or infrastructure projects that harm the environment.
About that time, in order to promote global public goods and free trade commercial market, the World Bank tried to control communicable disease created by laboratories in Intelligence agencies around the world, but could not stop the tragic effects of Ebola.
Since then, in accordance with its so-called “Six Strategic Themes,” the bank has put various additional policies into effect to preserve the environment while promoting development.
The World Bank is best known for financing big projects like dams, roads, and power plants, supposedly designed to assist in economic development, but which have often been associated with monumental environmental devastation and social dislocation.
In recent years, about half of its lending has gone to programs indistinguishable from the IMF’s: austerity plans that “reform” economic policies by suffocating the poor and inviting corporate exploitation.
The World Bank Group is the second largest public development institution in the world. Reform is long overdue. However, the most influential players are the finance ministers of the G8 countries, above all the US Treasury which sees no need for reform.
In 1992, an internal World bank review found that more than a third of all Bank loans did not meet the institution’s own lending criteria.
Unlike the United Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation’s financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-8) holding a total of 45%.
Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and societies.
The global rise in prosperity and personal freedoms over the past 65 years has been an immense human achievement despite a string of horrible regional conflicts and pockets of terrible suffering.
However we are now facing the latest “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — climate change, food security, infectious disease and urban youth unemployment — are rapidly approaching. It is hard to believe that the seven billion people living in 200 nations on earth today will be successful in holding them off without strong truly global institutions.
Its time to make our global institutions look and feel more global.
If we ask the question are these institutions ready to meet the challenge? The answer from most analysts is “No.”
While the WTO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, both the IMF and the World Bank are headquartered in Washington, D.C. The time has come to move at least one of them out of the United States.
The almost universal perception that there is no significant difference between the IMF and the World Bank. They work so closely together and have so many overlapping activities that they look like conjoined twins.
Their missions, however, are fundamentally different. Separation could make each one more effective.
Because the World Bank’s operations are overwhelmingly in developing countries, a case can be made for moving the World Bank to Africa, Asia or Latin America.
The biggest obstacle to moving the World Bank out of Washington is the veto power that only the United States wields. So re-locating the World Bank is a political non-starter.
By enhancing the Bank’s legitimacy, it would help to make the World Bank more effective in meeting the global challenges that are likely to become more difficult in the years to come.
The huge gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries remains one of the great moral dilemmas for the west. It also presents one of the greatest challenges for development economics. Do we really know how to help countries overcome poverty?
At least a billion people on the planet live in desperate circumstances resembling conditions that prevailed hundreds of years ago. Our failure to alleviate their plight is morally reprehensible. But where, exactly, are the greatest concentrations of poor people? Data is hard to come by and even harder to interpret. How can one compare cost-of-living indices in different periods when new goods are constantly upending traditional consumption models?
Consider the impact of cell phones in Africa, for example, or the internet in India.
The World Bank investment policy consolidates the position of the corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic regimes of many developing countries.
The Bank has evinced willingness to deal directly with almost any government without sensitivity to their human rights record.
Given that developing countries are both shareholders and clients in the Bank, the agencies are unlikely to admit that loans to a particular regime will not achieve any benefit until a reformed government achieves power.
The negotiation process between the Bank and the regime is invariably closed and the circulation of Bank reports restricted to the participants.
The poor are disenfranchised from the very institution supposed to support their development.
It is not necessary to deny that some of the infrastructure projects supported by the IBRD, from the road-building schemes in the 1980s to the dam construction programmes of the 1990s, failed to reduce poverty and caused a degree of environmental damage.
Only 3% of the Bank portfolio is set aside to protect against the loss of revenue from defaulting debtors.
Faced with mounting attacks from all sides, the IMF and World Bank are scrambling to assuage critics. On Apr. 10, the IMF set up an independent review board to evaluate its policies. The World Bank is pushing an initiative to combat the global scourge of AIDS. And both are working on a new strategy for fighting global poverty. But in the end, more radical reforms may be needed to get the demonstrators off the streets and the politicians off the two agencies’ backs.
The IMF — along with the WTO and the World Bank — has put the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction.
Over the past decade an estimated 3.4 million people have been displaced by bank-funded projects.
There’s always a price tag for development. But the question is: Who should pay the price?
Should poor people be the ones who sacrifice when the government tries to do a big project? Even the World Bank says the budget for a project should include money to cover people’s losses.
The World Bank’s role in the global climate change finance architecture has also caused much controversy. Civil society groups see the Bank as unfit for a role in climate finance because of the conditionalities and advisory services usually attached to its loans.
The Bank’s undemocratic governance structure – which is dominated by industrialised countries – its privileging of the private sector and the controversy over the performance of World Bank-housed Climate Investment Funds
The World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.
As an increasing shift from public to private funding in development finance has been observed recently, the Bank’s private sector lending arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has also been criticised for its business model, the increasing use of financial intermediaries such as private equity funds and funding of companies associated with tax havens.
As the World Bank and the IMF are regarded as experts in the field of financial regulation and economic development, their views and prescriptions may undermine or eliminate alternative perspectives on development.
There are also criticisms against the World Bank and IMF governance structures which are dominated by industrialised countries.
The World Bank hasn’t even adopted specific human rights policies, and doesn’t recognize that it has organizational responsibilities to abide by international human rights law.
Before I sign off on this post I should mention the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) established on 17 May 1930, is the world’s oldest international financial organisation. The BIS has 60 member central banks, representing countries from around the world that together make up about 95% of world GDP.
The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany – as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles – following World War I. The BIS was also the trustee for Dawes and Young Loans, which were internationally issued loans used to finance these reparations.
After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks.
The BIS has also emerged as an emergency “funder” to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.
The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.
Its head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and in Mexico City.
The mission of the BIS is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks.
Given the continuously changing global economic structure, the BIS has had to adapt to many different financial challenges. However, by focusing on providing traditional banking services to member central banks, the BIS essentially gives the “lender of last resort” a shoulder to lean on. In its aim to support global financial and monetary stability, the BIS is an integral part of the international economy.
The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change.
In the old days World Bank and maybe in the future will act as a lender of last resort to the banking sector during times of bank insolvency or financial crisis.
As the face of hunger has changed, so has its address.
The Wealth of Nations and the inheritance for humankind and all forms of life rest with World Organisation that are out of date – this should explain to many as to the disappearance of an equal World.
Money Talks as is evident with the latest Trade deal TTPI.
However, in today’s modern economy we are witnessing a rapidly expanding array of services with mobile technologies as their backbone, but what a World we are making. Our priorities are driving by growth at all costs, and a media owned by our Capitalist culture. We produces 1.3 billion metric tons of garbage each year, and that number is expected to double by 2025.
Is it not time that we the guardians of the Planet got together to shut some doors by tabling a peoples UN resolution to place a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions ( See previous posts)
The chances of this ever happening are minuscule as self-interest is deep rooted.
In the past 60 plus years, many changes have taken place with society, technology and governments but world peace is for the most part pie in the sky.
It is true that their have been no major global conflicts in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
So is Nato still relevant? Or is it just a pension club for the military old boys.
Since 1999 Nato has struggled in performing ever mission it has launched- Bosnia, Kosova, Afghanistan.
When Estonians pulled the Nato emergency chain on a cyber attack it was left with a lukewarm response raising the question what constitutes an attack on a country that Nato will react to.
What would happen if a war started, or the market crashed? I don’t think that NATO would fight a war together ( Including USA and Canada there are currently 28 member states) to be honest.
The conflicting priorities of Europe and the USA and the absence of a common foe all point to the need for Nato to be refilled into either a new European defense force or into the United Nations as a total peaceful organisation. Since the end of the cold war, NATO and the UN have become nearly interchangeable.
However some still say that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) is more relevant than it has been for years even if many of its members are moving further away from meeting their defense spending obligations.
The end of the Cold War and, consequently, the absence of the Soviet threat, did not render NATO ( The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) obsolete. There is no Warsaw Pact anymore, so why is there NATO?
The Alliance is now expanding like crazy. Faster than EU itself.
This means they either feel their power is crumbling and need more power, more allies, or the simple fact NATO has no more meaning.
It is the last surviving relic of the Cold War and is now the centerpiece of US-European relations. It has served as an integrating mechanism for Europe for more than sixty-five years.
Here what it cost to-day.
Nato 2014 Actual 2014 2015 2015
Member State Expenditure % of GDP Project Exp % of GDP
Bulgaria $604 million 1.3 $565 million 1.16
Canada $14.3 billion 1 $12.2 billion null
Estonia $430 million 2 $461 million 2.05
France $40.90 billion 1.5 $41.2 billion 1.5
Germany $44.3 billion 1.14 $41.72 billion 1.09
Hungary $1.03 billion 0.79 $0.79 billion 0.75
Italy $17.3 billion 1.2 $16.3 billion null
Latvia $252 million 0.9 $283 million 1
Lithuania $359 million 0.78 $474 million 1.11
Netherlands $8.7 billion 1 $9 billion null
Norway $5.8 billion 1.58 $6.8 billion 1.6
Poland $10.4 billion 1.9 $10.4 billion 1.95
Romania $2 billion 1.4 Not yet announced 1.7
UK $55 billion 2.07 $54 billion 1.88
US $582.4 billion 3.6 $585 billion 3.1
Turkey Not known
Albania “
Czech Rep “
Denmark “
Greece “
Iceland “
Luxembourg “
Poland “
Slovakia “
Slovenia “
Portugal “
Spain “
Belgium “
Unfortunately the US funding of Nato has it wrapped around its finger. It funds between one-fifth and one-quarter of Nato’s budget.
The civil budget for 2015 is € 200 million. The civil budget provides funds for personnel expenses, operating costs, and capital and programme expenditure of the International Staff at NATO Headquarters.
The military budget for 2015 is €1.2 billion. This budget covers the operating and maintenance costs of the NATO Command Structure. It is composed of over 50 separate budgets, which are financed with contributions from Allies’ national defence budgets (in most countries) according to agreed cost-shares.
While there is stagnation in military expenditure from the larger military powers in NATO — the UK, France, Germany, and Canada — that has led to several smaller NATO states to increase their funding. Not coincidentally, some of them would be front line states in a future military conflict between Russia and the NATO alliance.
NATO was founded to promote democratic values and encourage cooperation on defense and security issues. What started as a good idea that was backed by powerful nations, now is not the case.
With Russia involvement in Syria not to mention the Ukraine the real question is: Do we need what I see as a duplication Organisation that appears determined, for the first time in its history, to intervene beyond its borders.
Operational partnerships, such as the one Nato established with Australia in Afghanistan, are an additional source of personnel and resources for Nato-led operations.
Even militarily it does not make sense to have an European Union relining on an Organisation that has as its linchpin of the alliance Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that “an armed attack against one or more of them [NATO members] in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all” and that all members are obliged to assist the state(s) under attack.
Article 5 has been invoked only once in NATO’s history, after the terrorist attacks against the US homeland on September 11, 2001.
It says it committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes.
NATO provides security to the world because of their rules and regulations that prevent war. Considering those FACTS it is foolish to say that NATO is not relevant.
No wars have taken place in any country that is part of NATO after they joined.
It is supposed to act under resolutions that are carried out under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – NATO’s founding treaty – or under a UN mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries and international organizations.
So tell me what irresolution was passed about ring fencing Russia with rockets.
NATO’s incessant push to the east is an attempt to reinstate a Berlin Wall that spans the entire western border of Russia. This has no place in a peaceful world.
It’s no wonder that Russia is worries about that, as well as the new identity and tasks that NATO has awarded itself.
Russia opposes expansion mainly because she fears that the West is trying to isolate her in the corner of Europe, deprive her of her privileged relationship with her former satellites and undermine her national interests. This is why she is so fiercely opposing enlargement to include the Baltic States and Ukraine. NATO is viewed by Russia as nothing more than the club wielded by capitalist sharks.
Without a unified military force Europe (an area of the world that for many centuries was the most warlike on the globe) relies on the Nato. The dissolution of which without a replacement would leave the Continent without the existence of a military option to ensure stability within in its borders.
There is one thing for sure in light of NATO’s character as a political forum of democratic nations, expansion to incorporate those states that had authoritatively been excluded from it and pushed into the arms of the Soviet Union seems a logical consequence.
It can no longer be seen merely as a military Alliance with a defensive character, but as a political one as well, gathering the nations that share common democratic values and respect for human rights and the rule of law. However this is a new world where NATO seems confrontational and counter productive with limited capability to undertake even crisis management operations.
One of the major problems with the preceding league of nations, was the lack of ‘teeth’.
Instead of focusing on the rapidly declining interstate conflicts (as a result of interdependence), maybe Nato should be focusing more on threats such as cyber warfare, terrorism, and piracy, and vetting refugees.
It would be impossible to think a couple of decades ago that the Americans and the Russians might sit at the same table and plan common military operations.
You would think that Nato which is deeply involved in the Syrian war and the United Nations would be encouraging such a move to avoid Turkey being dragged into the War.
Instead Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, said that the organisation intended to “send a clear message” to show that the world’s most powerful military alliance was prepared to act in defence of its citizens. “Nato will defend you, Nato is on the ground, Nato is ready,” he said.
Nato says it is prepared to send troops to Turkey to defend its ally after violations of Turkish airspace by Russian jets,
Then all hell breaks loose as if this was the ultimate pretext for a NATO-Russia war.
But wait; NATO is actually too busy to go to war. The priority, until at least November, is the epic Trident Juncture 2015; 36,000 troops from 30 states, more than 60 warships, around 200 aircraft, all are seriously practicing how to defend from the proverbial “The Russians are Coming!”
Russia’s spectacular entry into the war theater threw all these elaborate plans into disarray.
Surely, there are differences between the US and Russia, but these can be overcome step by step with constructive dialogue and mutual understanding. They are no longer afraid of each other. They do have their differences, as it is natural that they should.
As events in the Ukraine, Syria and now Turkey are tragically demonstrating Nato could become a source of potential danger for the entire world.
The World has enough problems this is not a time for Nato saber-rattling.
Finally it is otter stupidity to think that if a nuclear device designed to emit an EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) were detonated about 300 miles over EUROPE ( most of Europe as we now know it would be gone) that Nato or the USA would do anything other than issue wet wipes.
Also one may wonder why Turkey — a country that is about 2,000 miles to the east of the Atlantic Ocean — finds itself in an entity called the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The answer is the roots of accepting non-North Atlantic nations into NATO, mainly Greece and Turkey lies at the heart of the Truman Doctrine — extending military and economic aid to states vulnerable to Soviet threat / expansion. NATO membership should guarantee, in essence, that Turkey would not become a Soviet ally.
Moving forward means dissolving what does not work and finding what will work.
The next two decades will make or break humanity.
Perhaps Nato should stand down as a military force and take up the mantel of fighting Climate Change.
Finally how can we have an ordered world where Russia and China are excluded from the police force?
If Nato is to be relevant it could start by building a world environmental police force.
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
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