Rethinking FinanceAlternative voices for a new financial architecture

This Conference will be an historic opportunity to present alternative solutions to this systemic crisis which are founded on the principles of human rights and environmental sustainability and which truly take into account the needs of workers, small farmers and the poor.

Tuesday, June 23
7:30 pm

ON THE EVE OF THE UN CONFERENCE ON THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

Co-sponsors: Gloves Off Collective, Social Watch & Others TBA

Towards a People-Centered Economy

Alternative Responses to the Crisis

Diana Aguiar, Sarah Anderson, Larry Holmes, Arjun Karki, Pedro Paez, Jana Silverman & Steve Suppan

Despite optimistic claims in the mainstream media that the global economic crisis is entering its final phases, more realistic analysts confirm that this worldwide financial downturn continues to worsen, with UN DESA predicting that the global per capita growth rate for 2009 will be an appalling -3.4% and the International Labor Organization setting unemployment figures for this current year at between 210-239 million, which amounts to 39-59 million more jobless workers in comparison with 2007.
With this bleak economic and social panorama as a backdrop, world leaders, representatives of international institutions, and civil society activists will meet from June 24-26 as part of the UN Conference on the Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impacts on Development, the first truly multilateral forum which will bring to the table both developed and developing countries (the G-192, involving all UN General Assembly member States) to seek concrete measures to mitigate the economic crisis. In contrast with the insufficient measures being proposed by the “big boys´ club” of the G-20, this Conference, spearheaded by the Nicaraguan liberation theology priest and current President of the UN General Assembly Miguel D´Escoto Brockmann, will be an historic opportunity to present alternative solutions to this systemic crisis which are founded on the principles of human rights and environmental sustainability and which truly take into account the needs of workers, small farmers and the poor. This Forum will present alternative proposals to end the crisis that have been generated by global social movements, progressive governments in Latin America, and the UN itself, and provide a forum for discussion on how a movement can be built in order to turn these proposals into a reality that can transform the market-based, unjust and unsustainable world financial architecture into one that can lay the framework for a people-centered economy.
For more information, email jsilverman@item.org.uy or editor@glovesoff.org

Panelists include:
Diana Aguiar, International Gender and Trade Network
Sarah Anderson, Institute for Policy Studies
Larry Holmes, Bail Out the People Movement
Arjun Karki, LDC Watch
Pedro Paez, Ex-Minister of Economic Coordination, Ecuador and member of Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System
Jana Silverman, Social Watch (moderator)
Steve Suppan, Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy and Our World is Not for Sale Network

Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15
Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers