China Endorses German Initiative For Hedge Fund Control

April 16 (EIRNS)--The Washington, D.C. meetings of the G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors on April 13, as well as a separate meeting with 20 hedge fund representatives on April 15, resulted in no concrete action, except for a mandate to Mario Draghi, the governor of the Italian central bank, to draft a report on the hedge funds issue for the next G-7 meeting in Potsdam on May 19.

Given Draghi's explicit linkage to the Anglo-Dutch financial interests, not much good can be expected from that draft report: as once exposed in an exclusive EIR story, Draghi participated in the infamous June 2, 1992, meeting on board the Queen's yacht off the coast of Italy, which planned privatizations carried out later on, when Draghi was a government official in the 1990s. After an interlude then, as head of Goldman Sachs Europe, Draghi was appointed governor of the Bank of Italy in 2006.

But, despite this lack of action, discussion on the hedge fund control issue is gaining wider support. The Finance Ministry of China endorsed the German initiative for hedge fund transparency, reported the German wire service, Finanznachrichten, on April 16, as an important step to maintain financial stability on a global scale, and the Chinese also urged supervision of transactions, of the scope and operational plans of the funds.

How urgent fund control is, is underlined these days by the massive increase of the price of uranium, which according to report, April 15, on Northern Germany's television station N-TV can be traced back to hedge fund activities, mostly. Funds already in 2005 and 2006 controlled 75 percent of spot market transactions of uranium,a figure likely higher even now. If the world is to be given a real chance for massive nuclear power development, it cannot be tolerated that the price of a crucial source like uranium remains in the hands of fund speculators.