Ensuring stability in the international financial system requires bolder steps. Restoring sustainable and stable growth will require a fundamental reconstruction of the way governments, through the network of international financial institutions and organisations regulate and manage the global market, and especially financial markets. The rejection of stabilising capital markets through re-regulation measures is ideological. Yet, the debate on the international financial architecture has been held behind closed doors by central bankers and finance ministry officials without the formal input from trade unions and civil society. Again, this is a closed club.
Regulation is too important to be left to the regulators.
We demand our governments to push for the establishment of a broad-based Independent International Commission mandated to report rapidly on the international regulation framework now needed. As an initial step the Financial Stability Forum must hold public hearings and consultations. We have agreed on proposals for regulating domestic financial markets, containing volatile capital flows, constructing new international institutions, stabilising international currency values, and international co-ordinating macroeconomic policies. Future programmes should promote good governance, employment growth and poverty reduction, rather than austerity. We demand a Trade Union Advisory Board to the IMF and the World Bank.