Some of its patents have received up to 50 years of exclusive rights and it has additionally obtained other highly beneficial agreements. The United States also has the peculiar privilege of issuing the currency in which the central banks and the trade bank deposits worldwide keep most of their hard currency reserves. The transnational companies of the nation whose citizens have the lowest saving rates are purchasing the world riches with the money saved by people in other countries and the money printed without the gold backing agreed upon in Bretton Woods, and unilaterally ended in 1971. New themes introduced in the WTO's agenda by the wealthy countries are threatening with a reduction of the developing countries' competitive possibilities, that in the midst of already difficult conditions fraught with inequalities, which will certainly be used as pretexts for non-tariff barriers or to prevent their commodities from acceding to the markets. The developing countries must fend off divisions.
Unity is our only asset, the only guaranty in the defense of our legitimate aspirations.
Those of us who were colonies yesterday and are still today enduring the consequences of backwardness, poverty and underdevelopment, we are the majority in this organization. Every one of us has the right to a vote and no one has the right to veto. We should turn this organization into an instrument of the struggle for a more just and better world. We should also count on those responsible statesmen, sensitive to our realities, who can undoubtedly be found in many developed countries. Despite so much euphoria no one can be sure of how long the United States economic system, ruled by the blind laws of the market economy, will be able to prevent a financial meltdown.