USA: Protesters rally against cheap third world labour as global finance chiefs gather for IMF and World Bank meeting in Washington D.C.

Protesters rally against cheap third world labour as global finance chiefs for the IMF and World Bank meet in Washington D.C. to discuss soaring oil prices and rocky credit markets. Demonstrators protested outside the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Washington, D.C. headquarters Saturday (October 20), calling on the world's leading nations to stop making policies for third world countries. Protesters also rallied this weekend against sweatshop labour in the third world. Protester Marco del Fuego, of the October Coalition, said demonstrators wanted to draw attention to inequity in wages and working conditions around the world. "The message to these people is, you know, 'you're not going to simply going to enjoy the playground without being questioned and challenged. You know, I don't know, you're responsible because you buy all this, you're responsible for the slavery wages that people are getting paid in the sweatshops in the global south and you're responsible for the suffering that's happening here in D.C. too'." Inside the meetings, global finance chiefs called for a more broad-based effort to calm financial markets, including tighter scrutiny by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions of increasingly powerful state-owned investment funds. This year's fall meetings of the IMF and World Bank come amid a slowing pace of global growth and heightened risk from recent turbulence in world credit markets and soaring oil prices. That has particularly affected Group of Seven rich nations whose finance ministers and central bankers met on Friday (October 19) and concluded that their growth will suffer because of ongoing turmoil in markets. By contrast, developing countries that are well represented among IMF members have been emboldened at these meetings by the fact that their growth rates are thriving and have used the opportunity to flex their economic muscle. After years of hearing from developed countries about the importance of prudent economic policies, developing nations felt they clearly had the upper hand, with China and India leading world growth and rich countries' economies slowing. Meanwhile, developed countries called on the IMF to increase its monitoring of growing state-backed wealth funds that hold surplus reserves mainly from oil exporters and China. Those funds are investing amounts which cause some nervousness among rich members of the Group of Seven industrial nations, which want to ensure the investments are for profit-making reasons only and are not politically motivated. Developing countries also took the opportunity to push for a greater say in the voting power of institutions like the IMF. Brazil warned bluntly that under-represented countries were likely to "go their own way" unless they get a greater stake. Intense political sensitivities are involved in trying to divide voting power more frequently. Some old powers like Britain and France potentially could see China move past them in voting status if an intensely negotiated formula truly acknowledges China's fast-growing economic might.

ITN Source | October 21, 2007

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