(ENI) — The World Council of Churches has warned that a meeting scheduled to discuss the current global "financial meltdown" in Washington, D.C., includes many of the people, governments, and institutions whose policies are responsible for the crisis.

"Debates on a new financial architecture should include representatives of

all developing countries and members from the civil society including religious communities," said WCC General Secretary Samuel Kobia in a statement today  (November 14.) He said the global crisis cannot be dealt with through "a meeting limited to a small portion of the world's countries."

The G20 meeting on November 15 and 16 is to include leaders of 20 developed and emerging economies who will meet in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to address the acute problems faced by the international financial system.

"This group includes many of the people, governments and institutions whose

policies are responsible for the current financial meltdown," said the WCC statement." The WCC is concerned about the effectiveness of such a meeting limited to a small portion of the world's countries, when the issue involves drawing up a new financial architecture in the 21st century."

In Germany, the Protestant Church Development Service (EED) said the task of

reforming the international financial system should not be left to the International Monetary Fund in its present form. The IMF, with its partner body the World Bank, is one of the world's main financial institutions.

"The IMF had seen the current crisis coming, but was not in a position to prevent it," EED official Claudia Warning said "Its main shareholders, the United States and European nations did not want to acknowledge the danger."

The German agency said the oversight of national supervisory authorities of

major banks and financial markets should come under a U.N. institution representing the governments of all counties, involving civil society groups, working as transparently as possible, and with the power to enforce its decisions.

Kobia stated that the global financial meltdown has debunked the myth that

"deregulated financial markets are 'efficient'." He said its consequences are threatening the achievement of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015. Efforts towards development aid and the mitigation of climate change had been endangered as well.

As "the prevailing international financial system is one based on injustice, nothing less than a paradigm shift is needed," Kobia said. The WCC head said his organization was proposing a series of recommendations for "a new international financial architecture", including a "regulatory framework and a process of democratizing all global finance and trade institutions."

Kobia's full statement:

www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/general-secretary/statements/14-11-08-statement-on-the-global-financial-crisis.html

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Greed
written by geoff parker, December 15, 2008

America had better wake up to what's hit 'em. If it doesn't, we're doomed to repeat the past... loopholes, deregulation and more greed. And while we work to stabilize the financial system, the villains should all be sentenced, and pay back what they swindled.
http://www.wealthdaily.com/report/culprits-of-the-financial-crisis/375