Comments on the G20 Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy

I was interviewed by Judith Prescott of Radio France Internationale regarding the social movements' reaction on the G20 summit, particularly on the Philippines. It was on the context of the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) mobilization on the US embassy (see details here, and RFI's article here) in response to the global call to action against the summit.

Here is the interview:

Comment: James Miraflor of Freedom from Debt coalition in Manila

15/11/2008 by Judith Prescott

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, right, chats with his Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown chats with aides prior to Saturday's start of the G-20 summit on the world economy in Washington. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)


Here is the article:

World financial crisis
Finance summit to discuss boosting world economy
http://www.radiofranceinternationale.fr/actuen/articles/107/article_2147.asp

Article published on the 2008-11-15
Latest update 2008-11-15 15:24 TU

Sarkozy (L) Bush (C) and Barroso at the White House
(Photo: Reuters)

Leaders of the G20 group of the world's dominant economies meet in Washington on Saturday to discuss how to tackle the world economic crisis. They are expected to commit themselves to stimulate their economies and tighten up financial regulation but discussions are expected to continue for several months.

Back to the Nation-State

Excerpted from the first draft of Fight Back: Reclaim and Expand the Lost Social and Economic Gains, Surge Forward Towards a New Economic Platform, a Freedom from Debt Coalition analysis paper written by the Debt and Public Finance Team (James Miraflor and Emman Hizon).

Directions for the System 

Now that the neoliberal system is going haywire, two directions are being presented in the status quo. The first direction, reasoning that it is not the direction but the intensity of pushing forward that is the problem, pushes us towards further market fundamentalism and advances the neoliberal project towards its completion – the total global economic integration and the absolute dismantling of the remaining free trade barriers.

We are now seeing how this paradigm works on how the rice crisis managed to do what trade talks failed to do – a unilateral reduction of crop tariffs of several countries – a solution forwarded by IMF-WB. Neoliberalism is still being presented as a solution, and in fact the problem is being portrayed as the half-hearted effort in implementing this philosophy of governance. This portrayal may not seem so obvious now, but it had been obvious before the collapse of main US investment and insurance houses.