Can the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Or rather, can a G20 meeting held in Toronto in June set off riots in France and Britain a few months later? Locally we read and hear news stories about protests at G20 meetings and the exorbitant cost of security to the host country - in our case nearly a billion dollars - but we don't hear and read much about what exactly the G20 is doing and how it affects our lives.
The international banking system has resisted any form of oversight or regulation for years and there have been a host of financial crises around the world as a result. Many times taxpayers have bailed the banks out and many governments have been forced to cut social services because the banks lent too much money to people who couldn't pay it back and then did not have the resources to under write their own risks. These banksters who deplore government interference in the free market rely on the taxpayer for help in troubled times.
Since 2008 the G20 have met on several occasions to try and put the global financial system back together again. They reached agreement that each government would bail out its banks, and inject money into the real economy to stimulate a recovery, but they had trouble agreeing on how to regulate the banks. Some countries wanted the banks to contribute cash to a stabilization fund that could be used in future for rescue purposes but some countries, Canada included, strongly opposed this. It was finally agreed that banks would hold a bit more cash in their vaults to bail themselves out when they write a bunch of bad loans coupled with a bit more "transparency" and "oversight" by government officials. Considering the damage caused by the reckless behaviour of the free bankers this is pretty mild stuff.
Meanwhile much harsher measures are being imposed on the people in countries where public money bailed out failed private enterprises. I'd like to see more information in The Citizen about how commitments made by Canada at the G20 trickle down to us.
Roy Olsen
Prince George
