The Vatican calls for global economic governance

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

On October 24th, 2011 the Vatican called for the creation of a “global public authority” along with a “central world bank” to manage the economic crisis and prevent such a thing from happening again.

Interestingly, Reuters claims that the document, released by the Vatican’s Justice and Peace Department, “should please the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.”

I sincerely hope this is the misguided opinion of the author, Philip Pullella, and not an accurate reflection of how OWS and other movements would actually react to these calls for more centralized control over the economy.

As I mentioned in my interview with Dave Hodges on “The Common Sense Show” aired on the Republic Broadcasting Network, the calls for more centralized control in the wake of this most recent stage in the global economic meltdown can be heard far and wide.

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However, this is a landmark moment as the Vatican is an unarguably powerful body and their calls for a “global public authority” are likely to be given a disturbing amount of credence.

While Pullella’s speculative statements are not substantiated in the article, there are some indicators that there are factions of the OWS movement that are in favor of global governance either political or economic.

These calls for “global democracy” and “global public authority” are nothing short of imbecilic given the fact that unaccountable, centralized control is what consistently gets us in trouble.

The Vatican conjures up the threat of “growing hostility and even violence” to push us into backing their solution to “the various forms of injustice” which, if left untended, could “ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid”.

Their solution is far from acceptable, in my opinion, and I do not think that their solution would stem the social unrest and hostility towards the ruling class given that it will just put more power in fewer hands.

The document, entitled “Toward Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority” offered some specific solutions like taxing financial transactions but consistently leans towards pure rhetoric.

“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” the document said.

Sure, that sounds great but how are you going to make the bankers, executives and legislators in Washington break their ties and give up their lives of luxury?

Is calling for people to examine their principles really going to make them suddenly operate with a conscience and put the future of the United States and the world before profit?

I doubt it.

The document calls for creating a “supranational authority” with “universal jurisdiction” and global control, which would be tasked with guiding economic policies and decision making.

The European Union is a supranational authority which, among other things, guides economic policies for Europe and that didn’t work out all too well for them.

The document says that the supranational authority would begin under the auspices of the United Nations and would somehow (exactly how is not clear) have the power to make sure developed nations are not able to gain “excessive power over the weaker countries”.

The document claims, “In economic and financial matters, the most significant difficulties come from the lack of an effective set of structures that can guarantee, in addition to a system of governance, a system of government for the economy and international finance”.

The document says that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) no longer has the power or ability to keep the global financial market stabilized through regulating the money supply or through monitoring “the amount of credit risk taken on by the system”.

Their solution includes not only telling “all these bodies and organizations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking” but also creating a “central world bank” to control capital flows and the system of monetary exchange.

This would include “some form of global monetary management” or likely a global currency which would just be that much easier to artificially inflate and deflate as those in power see fit.

They claim that the world needs a “minimum shared body of rules to manage the global financial market” although one might point out that centralizing control even further is not going to help anything.

Interestingly, Reuters claims that the OWS movement and the global demonstrations it inspired are “anti-capitalist movements” when in reality they are anti-corporatist movements.

Before we blame capitalism, we need to realize that the system in America is not capitalist; it is a crony capitalist/corporatist system in which banks are bailed out on the taxpayer’s dime instead of given the capitalist treatment which would let them fail.

The Vatican says that we should “not be afraid to propose new ideas, even if they might destabilize pre-existing balances of power that prevail over the weakest.”

However, what they are proposing is far from new and it would do the exact opposite of destabilizing pre-existing balances of power that keep the elite wealthy while the vast majority lives in poverty.

In fact, a system of global financial governance in which more control is in even fewer hands than it is today would simply stabilize the balance of power and make the weak and impoverished that much more helpless.

The Vatican needs to stop pretending that they do not have vast material wealth beyond what most people could imagine and the power to exert their influence around the globe.

The Vatican does not represent the common people, and this proposal just further emphasizes the fact that they are looking out for those in the upper echelons of finance and politics, even going as far as to attempt to justify putting even more power in their corrupt hands.

What do you think is the solution? Putting power in the hands of people even further removed from the day-to-day realities of the people impacted by their policies as the Vatican proposes? Or something completely different? Let me know via e-mail at [email protected] and I might use your comments in a future article.