France is threatening to pull out of G20 talks without real changes to world financial regulations.
Christine Lagarde told Hardtalk that President Nicolas Sarkozy would not sign any agreement if he felt “the deliverables are not there”.
Strengthening financial regulation will be one of the key issues at the G20.
France wants a stronger global financial regulator than the US and the UK would like.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Ms. Lagarde sets up a picket, god knows the French are good at strikes…
Seriously though, the French minister is right. All the gnashing of teeth will not help one iota without real changes to the financial system. Changes that actually put limits on the powers of corporations to manipulate imaginary sums of money in ways that even they can’t keep track of.
While they’re at it, maybe they can come up with a way of breaking it to the citizens of the world that infinite growth economies simply don’t work and we’re going to have to find a way to live in a more flat-lined economy that is actually self-sustaining.