---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 23:34:25 -0500 Subject: WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM UN Leader To Warn of Dangers in Wealth Gap
-- by Alan Friedman International Herald Tribune Complete text at http://www.iht.com/articles/46889.html NEW YORK Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, will warn international business and political leaders Monday that globalization risks a devastating boomerang effect if the world's elite fail to increase spending to battle poverty and disease in developing countries and act quickly to open up markets in rich countries. <edit> Using uncharacteristically strong language, the UN chief is expected to say that the protests against globalization reflect the reality that power and wealth are unequally shared and that more than 1 billion people live in extreme poverty and degradation. Mr. Annan plans to bluntly point out that the anger rests on a perception that globalization itself is to blame and that those driving the process - the very same leaders attending the forum meetings - are responsible. <edit> Horst Koehler, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a frequent target of the anti-globalization movement, emerged as another unusual voice on behalf of a more equitable world. Mr. Koehler won applause from a forum audience full of finance ministers and chief executives when he scolded rich countries for failing to open their markets to exports from poor countries and criticized U.S. agriculture subsidies that damage developing countries. . "Societies in the advanced countries are too selfish to give up their privileges," Mr. Koehler told a weekend panel. "If we really want to make globalization work for the benefit of all, then the advanced countries have to realize it can no longer be business as usual." <edit> Meanwhile, Mr. Koehler of the IMF issued a couple of highly unusual mea culpas over the weekend. . "I think the IMF has to recognize that it has made mistakes, and in one or two cases there was too much concentration on fiscal adjustments," Mr. Koehler told the forum in an apparent reference to criticism that IMF austerity policies had hurt some Asian and Latin American economies in the 1990s. . Mr. Koehler also made the surprising acknowledgment that while the IMF had in the past insisted that emerging economies open their capital markets to investment, "Today, I would never advise a country to open its capital market without first having established internal regulatory institutions such as banking supervision so they can cope with huge capital flows." -- by Alan Friedman International Herald Tribune Complete text at http://www.iht.com/articles/46889.html
