The financial crisis which started in the USA and then spread to become an international financial and economic crisis calls for a thorough conceptual rethinking of how to reshape the processes of financial, commercial and trade globalisation which have dominated the last decades. This post-Bretton Woods arrangement has not only led to the concentration of capital and power in both developed and developing countries, but has also helped create a growing number of financial, commercial and social crises which are ever more frequently impacting various countries and regions. Each crisis presents a setback for many countries, social groups and individuals unable to integrate into the globalisation processes and benefit from it. The short-term measures applied by various governments around the world are useful and urgent steps. However, so long as the fundamental accumulated issues remain unresolved - for example, the unsustainable US fiscal and trade deficit; the huge trade surplus of China and a few other countries; the almost complete liberalisation of financial flows which are contributing more and more to global financial instabilities and crises; the role of big financial institutions; the deepening of social inequalities between and within both the most developed and developing countries - these measures will only partly alleviate and postpone the genuine search for new institutional solutions. The reformed and appropriately reduced role of the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the more subtle rules of the World Trade Organisation that are closer to the GATT rules, the acceptance of labour and environmental standards and acceptance of the reformed role of financial institutions moving them away from short-term speculation are but a few of the proposals that could substantially reform the currently unsustainable globalisation processes. It is not a question of whether to have more or less globalisation, but a question of the alternative pathways of globalisation that will have to be put forward when discussing the future international economic, financial, social and legal framework.
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