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Global Unions: Reform Banks Worldwide
The global union movement is calling on other governments to follow President Obama’s commitment to restructure banks as a key part of comprehensive financial regulatory reform. Obama has proposed a series of urgently needed reforms, including an end to the practice of banks using depositors’ money to engage in the kind of high-risk speculative operations, such as hedge funds and private equity, which helped plunge the world into recession.
As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last week:
Financial companies must not be allowed to go back to business as usual—or worse. We urge the President and Congress to make financial re-regulation a top priority.
Trumka called for:
- Creating a new consumer financial protection agency.
- Regulating shadow capital markets, including hedge funds, private equity and over-the-counter derivatives.
- Reforming corporate governance and executive pay.
- Creating a systemic risk regulator that is accountable to the public.
Read Trumka’s statement here.
Says Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC):
While tens of millions of people are losing their jobs, the very same bankers and financiers who poisoned the global economy with their greed and arrogance are once again playing their dangerous game of financial roulette. This has to stop, and other governments must also move to take them on quickly and with the same determination as President Obama is showing.
John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, warns that unless governments around the world, especially the European Union, act fast and in step with U.S. plans, bankers will move to take advantage of inadequate regulation in other jurisdictions.
John Evans, general secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which includes most of the world’s top economies, sums it up this way:
We need a clear and globally coherent regulatory framework to make sure that banking practices serve the real economy.
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2 Comments
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I agree with Mr.Ryder and President Trumka.Now the bankers in the UK are whining that taxing their bonuses will destroy the city of London!If the city can survive a great fire ,bubonic plague epidemic and WW2 I am certain that it will survive the bankers who have wrecked the world economy
Banks are stil being rewarded for causing much of the financial collapse and even with his State of the Union address, Pres. Obama did not offer anything definitive. Sec’y Geithner is still bragging about the regulations put on the banks with the stimulus. Whatregulations.
Based on my observations, the banks are at it again. Fees are rising albeit in a sneakier way.