ASIAN FARMERS DENOUNCE G-20 SUMMIT

Media Release: October 30, 2008

The Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) strongly criticizes the White House’s invitation to host the Group of Twenty (G20) economic summit on November 15, 2008 supposedly to “discuss the current global economic and financial problems that are affecting the world.” The G20 members are Argentina , Australia , Brazil , Canada , China , France , Germany , India , Indonesia , Italy , Japan , Mexico , Russia , Saudi Arabia , South Africa , South Korea , Turkey , the United Kingdom , the United States and the European Union.

Some are saying that the November 15 G20 meeting will be a “Bretton Woods II”—a replay of the 1944 gathering where leaders agreed to rebuild the global monetary system in the chaotic aftermath World War II (WWII) and the Great Depression। However, the degree to which this is possible has come into question. Beyond the G20 leaders, the IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations have all been invited to participate in the ‘special’ summit.

According to a statement by US Press Secretary Dana Perino, “the leaders will review progress being made to address the current financial crisis, advance a common understanding of its causes, and in order to avoid a repetition, agree on a common set of principles for reform of the regulatory and institutional regimes for the world’s financial sectors."

But militant peasants of APC from 9 countries in Asia are pessimistic as to whether such forums can truly alleviate the severe consequences of the current financial crisis. “The G-20 was primarily created to prevent the kind of crisis we are experiencing now. How can mere discussions possibly help the international economy at present?” stated APC Secretary-General Danilo Ramos in a statement he made today.

“They want to strengthen the foundations of capitalism by discussing how they can further liberalize their economies and make them ‘competitive’ to global market. But we all know that the neo-liberal policies that the US and other imperialist countries have espoused before and continue to espouse today have contributed to the ruin of the financial markets.” added Ramos.

In the 1980s, capitalist forces open the markets of developing countries as a source of cheap labor and raw materials, and at the same time, the former’s dumping ground for its excess products in order to alleviate its worsening crisis of overproduction. The unholy trinity of trade liberalization, privatization of public assets and deregulation of markets are the backbone of the so-called “free-market globalization” .

According to the data of “World Distribution of Household Wealth”, in the year 2000 “the richest 1% in the world own 40% of global assets, the richest 2% own 51%, while the poorest half of the world population own barely 1% of global wealth." Furthermore, overproduction makes investments in new productive facilities unprofitable, since a rapidly rising share of surplus capital seeks profit not in the real economy, but in financial speculation. Thus, a slight movement in the stock markets leads to drastic effects in businesses. This perfectly illustrates the fact that only imperialist countries and their monopoly capitalist elite benefit from neo-liberal policies while the conditions in third world nations continue to deteriorate.

Ramos ended by saying that “the financial crisis clearly exposes the weakness of capitalism and the truth that it is not a viable economic system. It is bound to fail due to its inherent contradictions – the crisis of overproduction and overaccumulation of capital in the hands of a few. Third world countries must therefore take a stand against the US and other imperialist nations for letting them dictate their economic policies with us. We must join hands and onward the struggle to assert for our national sovereignty and resist imperialist globalization!” #