Link to Full Statement and Signatories
September 13, 2010, St. Augustine, Fl, USA; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Greenwich, CT , USA
Financial experts, warning of future crises, call for re-affirming finance as a global commons, first recognized at Bretton Woods in 1945.
The TRANSFORMING FINANCE group, as beneficiaries and active participants in global capital markets, affirmed their responsibility to reform finance. The full TRANSFORMING FINANCE Statement asserts that “Financial markets are founded on trust – now eroded by the irresponsible and unethical behavior of many players, including many of our leading financial institutions.” The signers, from the European Union, China, India, Australia, Brazil, Canada and the USA agree that “unbridled greed-driven speculation, the improper use of public infrastructure technology for activities such as high-frequency trading, together with a misguided self-regulatory ideology, damaged the financial commons and the trust on which we all depend.”
The TRANSFORMING FINANCE group outlined necessary principles and conditions to operate the shared global financial architecture consistent with 21st century realities. The group pledged to continue their own efforts to modernize capital markets to serve human societies as one of the tools to manage the global commons, using the new accounting standards and national accounting beyond “efficient market” and “rational actor” models, now outdated by findings in brain and neurosciences.