G-7 Solution to Global Financial Crisis-A Marshall Plan for Creditors and Speculators

A Marshall Plan for Creditors and Speculators Michel Chossudovsky FOLLOWING the dramatic nosedive of the Russian rouble, financial markets around the world had plummeted to abysmally low levels. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on August 31, its second largest decline in the history of the New York Slock Exchange. In the uncertain wake of 'black September 1998', G-7 ministers of finance had gathered hastily in Washington. On their political agenda; a multibillion dollar plan to avert the risks of a worldwide financial meltdown. In the words of its political architects US treasury secretary Robert Rubin and UK chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown: "we must do more to...limit the swings of booms and busts that destroy hope and diminish wealth".1 Announced by president Bill Clinton in late October, the G-7 proposal to install a 90 billion dollar fund "to help protect vulnerable but essentially healthy nations" from currency and stock market speculation will go down in history as the biggest financial scam of the post-war era.