Brookings: "Toward reimagined global financial architecture: Progress and Challenges"

The meeting was held on Friday, April 19, 2024 from 9-11 AM.  Ms. Cecilia Rouse, President of Brookings, introduced the participants on the common discussion topic, divided into two panels, giving each participant ample opportunity to make their points: Amina Mohammed, United Nations; Brahima Coulibaly, Global Economy, Brookings; Amar Bhattacharya, Global, Brookings; Azucena Arbeleche, Minister of Economy, Uruguay; Iyabo Masha, Director, G24; Njuguna Ndung'u, Cabinet Secretary, Kenya; and Jose Ocampo, Columbia University.

The group, seemed to severally, populate a protest, demanding reform of the financial system and greater say in the manner the global system of lending and borrowing money is set up.  They individually voiced concern over (1) how the poorer countries are to adequately remedy the effects of climate change--an immediate, pressing problem to which those lesser than the rich countries have little monetary means to cope with; and (2) how to prevent the favorite treatment certain groups their country receive as compared to the rest in their society.  The frustrations expressed boiled down to these two, essentially, in my opinion.

There has been corruption in high governmental circles worldwide, and democracies have deployed the will of the people replace autocratic control of the society that tends to lead to it.  The other--the current number of environmental catastrophes caused by climate change--may require substantial displacement of peoples and substitution of crops grown to feed them.

Through the United Nations, it would seem, plans will be drawn up to map strategies to circumvent the harsher effects of climate disasters upon a population, e.g., building infrastructures that can withstand their effects, moving whole segments of a people to other places on earth.

But the real problem loudly proclaimed at this meeting is that the poorer are not able to cope with the banking system as presently in operation--for centuries!  These countries just don't have the financial wherewithal to do battle for their own salvation!  And, the rich are busy with their own problems, it would appear.  In any case, I think there is loud dissatisfaction with the IMF and the World Bank--both cited in the course of the discussion.  

In short, the poor countries around the world are going into serious debt; as demonstrated by the loans to China through its recent Belt and Road Initiative in Africa, that ended up with native countries' incurring significant debt.