Vince Cable MP joined two other eminent speakers, Canon Peter Challen and Tarek El Diwany, on Wednesday 7 October to consider ideas for a more just and sustainable financial system. Around 100 people attended the meeting at the YMCA Surbiton organised by the Richmond and Kingston World Development Group.
Dr Cable thought the fact that power was passing from the G8 – a group of the richest countries – to the G20, with China, India and Brazil as members, should be welcomed. Speaking of the credit crunch, he said how wrong it was that we had had a situation where profits were privatised and losses borne by taxpayers. He reaffirmed the need for banking reforms and changes to global financial institutions.
“Life is a gift”, said Canon Challen. He believed it was our flawed interest-based monetary system that needed to be changed if we wanted a more sustainable world. Tarek El Diwany agreed. Mr El Diwany had started life as a derivatives trader. However as he looked more carefully at the financial system and he travelled and saw the devastating effect of debt service on poor countries, he began to think differently. He felt the whole way that banks in effect ‘created’ money in the form of debt and then charged interest was deeply flawed and led inevitably to huge inequality between rich and poor.
Mr El Diwany stressed that without changing the current financial system via monetary reform we will all remain stuck. This is because the whole system does not create enough money to pay both the amount borrowed and the interest charged by banks. Thus without people taking out more and more loans, getting into greater debt the whole system collapses. When we cannot take on any more debt we are then faced with economic recession and perhaps even slump and people lose their jobs, default on their loans, and lose their homes. Rev Canon Peter Challen added, that at the same time the need for perpetual economic growth to pay off previous debt has led us to use more and more resources; destroying our environment and leading to adverse climate change that affects both poor and rich alike.
Members of the local Richmond and Kingston Group were delighted that the World Development Movement’s national director Deborah Doane also attended the meeting. She encouraged everyone to become active citizens and to put pressure on politicians to work for a more just and sustainable world.