Newsletter No. 18 - February
2009
Links to other Newsletters can be found here.
A CRASH CAMPAIGN - URGENT ACTION
NEEDED
The G20 Must Discuss Monetary Reform at its 2nd April
Meeting and
We Must Make Sure It's on Their Agenda
The way money is created today as profit-making
debt, both nationally and internationally, cannot avoid
leading to recurrent highly damaging booms and busts .
In normal times too, it results in a skewed system
of financial rewards and penalties that motivates almost
everyone in the world to get money in socially, environmentally,
and economically damaging ways.
This means that not only active citizens should
support monetary reform . So should non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) concerned with social
issues (poverty, welfare, social injustice,
health, human rights, etc), environmental issues (climate
change, energy supply and use, water, food and agriculture,
etc); the problems of ‘developing’ countries;
and general economic and public policy issues (world
future prospects; local and community economic development;
ethical investing, trading and consuming; corporate
social responsibility; etc).
The G20 (twenty of the economically
most important countries in the world) is replacing the
G7 as the top international forum for discussing
the world’s economic problems. It is meeting
at the beginning of April in London to discuss international
co-operation in handling the present global financial
crisis.
So far, their policies have ignored the importance
of national and international monetary reform. It
is vital that they should be persuaded to put these topics
on their agenda and we must make sure that this
happens.
What to do. People in all the G20 countries
should act urgently: to mobilise pressure
on their governments by early March to include
national and international monetary reform in their
April agenda, and to achieve widespread media
coverage in their countries about why those
reforms are necessary.
That can be done through many channels. They include
writing and other ways of communicating:
- to the politicians who represent
us in our legislatures;
- to the press and broadcasting media;
- to NGOs that support our concern
for development, social justice, environment, ethical
economics, or any of the numerous causes that suffer
from how the present money system works;
- to other people able to do any of these things themselves,
and
- by speaking at meetings about those
concerns.
In an enterprise of this kind, even the smallest
action may turn out to have a big impact.
Please feel free to use any information from
the campaign
document, to help you put across the case
for monetary reform. It explains why monetary reform
is needed and suggests some possible solutions.
During the next eight weeks, this
will have to be a highly de-centralised co-operative
project. It is potentially very influential if
self-energised and co-ordinated by its participants
with one another in their own and other G20 countries
- pursuing the shared aim of encouraging and
pressuring the governments of the G20 countries to
take monetary reform very seriously.
If, during this time, anyone has short
news items to report on progress from which others could
take encouragement and example, please email
me.
Please let anyone who you think might
be interested know about this campaign. As the G20 meeting
starts on 2nd April, time is of the essence.
James Robertson
4th February, 2009
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