Friday, June 26, 2009
Within the nearly 90 pages of President Barack Obama’s plan to reform the government’s regulation of the financial industry is a recommendation to expand the role of a little-known international banking body called the Financial Stability Board. This board is being touted by leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies (G20) to “promote global financial stability”—but what exactly does that mean, asks Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt.
“Financial stability is a worthy goal, but the devil is in the details,” writes Brown. “Some see the new agency, which is based in the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, as the latest sinister development in a centuries-old consolidation of power by an international financial oligarchy.”
Whereas its predecessor, the Financial Stability Forum, served merely in an advisory capacity to G20 countries, the new board “has real teeth” and can impose “obligations” and “commitments” on sovereign governments. What bothers Brown is the lack of clarity when it comes to this new global financial body and how it will influence the banking systems of the United States and other nations.
Brown writes: “Suspicious observers might say that this is how you pull off a private global dictatorship: (1) create a global crisis; (2) appoint an ‘advisory body’ to retain and maintain ‘stability’; and then (3) ‘formalize’ the advisory body as global regulator. By the time the people wake up to what has happened, it’s too late.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
The Bloodless Coup of the Global Financial Stability Board: From Guidelines to Rules (by Ellen Brown, Huffington Post)
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