ATTAC BLASTS "SYSTEMIC" FINANCIAL CRISIS, CALLS FOR A "NEW BRETTON WOODS" AND "ABROGATING" PARTS OF THE LISBON TREATY

May 29 (LPAC)--The anti-globalist organization ATTAC issued a document on May 19 which states that the global financial crisis has "systemic roots;" denounces that the Lisbon Treaty would allow "the complete takeover of society by finances, [and those articles] must be abrogated;" and calls for establishing "a new Bretton Woods" monetary system. The document, which clearly picks up many threads of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche's ideas on the crisis and its solution--without ever mentioning LaRouche by name--was described by Helga LaRouche today as being very useful. But it would have been preferrable if they had had the honesty to indicate their sources and credit for the work, she noted, recalling the opening line of Friedrich Schiller's play Piccolomini , Act I Scene 1, where Field Marshall Illo says to Count Isolani: "Ye have come too late--but ye are come!"

Entitled "The time has come for a democratic control of the financial markets," the ATTAC document from the outset emphasizes the systemic nature of the crisis: "The crisis is not the result of an unfortunate circumstantial context and it cannot be reduced either to the failure of controls, evaluation agencies or bad conduct of isolated actors. It has systemic roots and therefore the structure and mechanisms of the system in general are called into question."

It goes on to propose:

A) "Systemic changes rather than fragmentary repair... All the financial system in its neo liberal form has demonstrated it is economically unstable, inefficient and harmful to equality, to the general welfare and to democracy."

B) "A new Bretton Woods instead of so called self regulating market forces... National supervision and international cooperation among regulating bodies must be reinforced... Limits must be imposed on free trade and on international mobility of capital...."

E) "Special attention must be placed on the European Union. The financial dimensions of treaties, and especially that of Lisbon, are made to fit the neo liberal dogma. Article 63 of the Lisbon treaty, which forbids all restriction of capital flows and thereby creates the ideal conditions for the complete takeover of society by finances, must be abrogated. We demand also that limitations of freedom of establishment (Arts. 49 and 54), which give capital the freedom to migrate wherever financial conditions are most favourable and to look for asylum in the City of London or wherever it seems in their interest. Also, it is necessary to reform the statute of the ECB," which is fully based on neo liberal dogma. "It is necesarry to exit from this monetarist ideology and to exert democratic control over this institution, whose policies influence considerably the existence of citizens. We demand that the ECB focus on employment, preservation of purchasing power, and stability of the financial system."

ATTAC also calls for banning hedge funds, limiting securitization strictly to governments, and overall taxation of capital.