by Roberto Bissio

Israel's riot police invaded last Sunday, November 9th., the church of the Holy Sepulcher arresting two monks, armenian and greek, to finish a violent discussion more suitable of hooligans in a stadium than priests in the most sacred place of christianity.

The armenian monks had organised a procession to commemorate four hundred years of the holy woods that are worshipped as being part of Jesus Christ's Cross. Thus, the greek monks formed a human barrier to repel the advance of the procession to which they were not invited, avoiding them to pass into the grave's ediculus they are in charge of custody. "If the procession went on, they would've gained a right they don't actually have", explained a greek monk named Serafim, bleeding from a cut in his face after being punched by armenian monks that broke his glasses.

The Holy Sepulcher is being guarded by six Christian Churches (roman catholics, orthodox greeks, copts, armenians, sirians and ethiopian), each one of which have exclusive places to use and also make use of the right to administer the common places. Not an easy task. In the XIX century somebody used a wooden staircase at the entrance of the place. The object is still there because there's no agreement about who has authority enough to take it away. To make matters worse, a place commonly packed with pilgrims and tourists coming from every corner of the world, lacks an emergency exit and parts of the ceiling are about to colapse due to the fact that the neccesary renovations can't begin because of disagreement between copts and ethiopians.

Meanwhile, THERE IS a global agreement to reform the world financial architechture, taking into account the press releases coming from Sao Paulo, at the end of the preparatory meetings for the G-20, that will take place in Washington on November 15th. European leaders have already agreed, on November 7th., four main principles for this so-called reform.

The first three of them establish the necessary regulations and discipline so that global financial markets could operate: universal regulation with no exceptions (no more fiscal paradises nor offshore banks, regulation of risk assesment agencies), transparency and common accounting rules in order to end secrecy in banking operations and risks, and adequate governmental monitoring of big financial groups to detect future "bubles" in time.

The fourth european principle aims to give IMF the task of "preventing the crises" and a "central role in a more efficient financial architechture", because the institution would count with "enough legitimacy and universitality". Such confidence of the EU contrasts deeply with the opinion of participants from the South to the G-20 Summit.

The acusations of Argentina, Thailand and Indonesia stating that the IMF has contributed -if not caused-, their respective financial crisis is evident. Ex Finance Minister of India, Yashwant Sinha, said in June -months before the crisis exploded: "I believe that international financial institutions are terribly inadequate to solve global problems. There's a big flaw in how the United States regulate the financial operations and What is the United States doing about the IMF? Nothing".

There's consensus enough between analysts about the origin of the financial crisis and consequent recession of global economy: Millionary loans conceded in the United States in the real estate market to whom were unable to pay, and later to sell this "toxic" bills to banks and financial institutions worldwide as if they were true. The firsts principles of the european proposal aims to avoid this procedures in the future, but designating IMF as a regulatory entity is a way of preserving their own interests.

From it's creation, IMF has always been directed by an european (and World Bank by the United States). Europeans have thirty three percent of votes in the institution, and thus veto power, the same as United States with seventeen percent of votes.

When Russia, Asia and Argentina had their financial crisis, the IMF came to salvage the economies but imposed hard conditionalities, in much cases establishing rules that big economic blocks didn't apply in their own countries. Now that United States and Europe are in crisis, they need of the global reserves accumulated by countries as China, India and petroleum producers, to save their economies. The powers that control IMF not only require poor countries to finance the rich, they also want to do it through the institution they control!

Two weeks from now, after the G-20 Summit in Washington, the G-192, that is the 192 members of United Nations, will meet at the highest level in Doha, capital city of Qatar, in the second summit about "Finance for Development". But the United States and the United Kingdom neglect to have a discussion about global finance or reforming it's architechture.

In this way a UK expert analyst commented his impression after a meeting with Prime Minister's Gordon Brown consultants: "In the short term they want more global coordination to help the countries victim of the financial crisis, but they deny to recognise any responsibility in the financial sector of Britain or the United States. They want to relaunch bussiness negotiations being at the same time against any mandate coming from the United Nations. We were told that the Prime Minister has ambitious ideas, but didn't mention any nor offered to discuss ours. They said that the Prime Minister wants a long lasting systemic change, but announced that the in next summits would be discussed only short term measures. Very dissapointing.

Leaders that will meet in Washington should reflect about what happened in the Holy Sepulcher Church a few days ago, where there's no emergency exit and the ceiling is about to collapse because the guards of each sector only worry about their selfish privileges. The architechture of international finances resembles too much to the Golgothan Church.

Roberto Bissio
© This article was published in November 13th., 2008, in Agenda Global, La Diaria (Montevideo - Uruguay).