Regulate the markets!
We are committed to a common goal: reforming the financial markets, so that they serve the real economy and jobs.
The crisis has shown how the financial sector became divorced from the needs of the real economy and real value creation. Radical reform of the financial sector is now of fundamental importance if we want to re-establish its proper role at the service of citizens and businesses and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again.
Looking beyond the immediate response to the crisis, when our economies begin to recover, we must ensure that there is no return to ‘business as usual’.
While this crisis was precipitated by the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. and propagated by reckless financial speculation, the underlying causes lie in fundamental economic imbalances that have resulted from three decades of neo-liberal economic policies. There is a need to establish a new model of economic development that is economically efficient, socially just and environmentally sustainable. This model must rebalance the relationship between public intervention and market forces in the global economy; the financial and the real economy; labour and capital; trade surplus and deficit countries; and industrialized and developing countries. Above all, it must bring to an end the policies that have generated massive inequality between and within nations over the past two decades and that are the root causes of the current global crisis.
We want public authority over global finance. We must enhance accountability, mandate and resources of supervisors and strengthen regulation and oversight at both national and European levels.