David Cameron went to Toronto last weekend promising an end to Gordon Brown style new initiatives at every G20 summit, and in a feat of post-modernist irony, chose to mark this with a new initiative of his own: he demanded that the G20 should follow up on past decisions and make sure they got implemented. Au contraire, as they say in nearby Quebec. What the Canadian G20 came up with was the most vacuous, indecisive and unfocused G20 declaration in the body’s short two year history. The Washington Post’s Harold Schneider summed up the different positions adopted by governments on their way to the meeting. Read more »

   Filed under: Environment, G20, International development, Transactions tax | 3 Comments »

According to the Prime Minister, the G20 Summit of world leaders backed the UK’s Budget as ‘tough but fair’. How does this claim stack up?

The Summit’s Declaration had something for everyone, especially on the question of whether or not it is too early to start cutting deficits. Read more »

   Filed under: G20, Public services, Quality of work, Welfare | 3 Comments »

The meeting between G20 union leaders and G20 host, Canadian PM Stephen Harper, was much more positive than expected. He agreed with union leaders that the real test of whether the G20 had tackled the global economic crisis was the impact on jobs and unemployment – and on youth unemployment in particular, exactly as TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber argued. The task now is for G20 leaders meeting in Toronto next weekend to reconcile the pro-jobs message from the April G20 employment ministers meeting and the pro-cuts position of the G20 finance ministers meeting in Korea earlier this month.

As John Evans, General Secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD put it:

“There is a contradiction between the conclusions coming from the G20 Labour Ministers and those from the G20 Finance Ministers. G20 Leaders must resolve this contradiction and send a clear message of confidence that their priority is working people, not bond markets.”

   Filed under: G20, Unemployment | 1 Comment »

A bit of a round up of a big day of news from the Robin Hood Tax campaign. The really new bit of news is the report issued by the Institute of Development Studies, which is the most powerful evidence you can get – written by an avowed sceptic of financial transactions taxes, who has read the evidence and emerged persuaded that the Robin Hood Tax would work. But also, almost un-reported by the UK media, the Council of the European Union – attended for the first time by UK Prime Minister David Cameron – backed a global financial transactions tax. Meanwhile, campaigners from Bournemouth (Unison conference delegates) to Toronto (At the Table activists) called on G20 leaders here and in Canada ”to commit to the Robin Hood Tax, a 0.05 per cent Financial Transaction Tax on speculative trading that could raise billions each year for fighting climate change and poverty both at home and abroad.” Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, G20, Public spending, Transactions tax | 1 Comment »

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber is meeting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper today. He’s part of a delegation of trade union leaders from G20 countries, meeting the Canadian host of the G8 and G20 Leaders’ Meeting next weekend. His message will be that the jobs crisis isn’t over – either in developed countries like the UK or much of the developing world – and that public sector cuts should be avoided until the jobs come back. The UN estimates that 300 million new jobs are needed around the world. The global unions message is also the message of US President Obama.

Read more »

   Filed under: Beyond Crisis, G20, Public spending, Unemployment | 5 Comments »

In the US, the Robin Hood Tax is more often called a “financial speculation tax” or FST. There’s a new report out today from the respectable Institute for Policy Studies, Taxing the Wall Street Casino, which sets out how an FST would work and what its impact would be. The report loks at a range of options for raising revenue that have merit, including everything from raising capital gains taxes to progressive estate taxes, but focuses on an FST. As the report’s authors say:

“No one claims that taxing speculation will solve all our problems. It won’t singlehandedly prevent another financial crisis. It won’t create all the jobs we need, eliminate global poverty, or solve climate change. But combined with other sensible financial regulations, it could take us a long way towards reining in Wall Street and meeting urgent social and environmental needs.”

   Filed under: G20, Transactions tax | 2 Comments »

Urgh – it’s difficult writing blog headlines for complicated stories! The new Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) gave with one hand and took with the other today, which one guesses wasn’t the Government’s plan. It revised downwards both the Government borrowing requirement (meaning the public finances aren’t as disastrous as people have suggested), and the growth projections (meaning the recovery is more anaemic than hoped). Meanwhile, the French President and German Chancellor made their most high profile call yet for the Robin Hood Tax. Here at the TUC, we think that what all this means is that next week’s UK budget should avoid massive cuts in spending and regressive tax rises such as VAT. Not only are they unnecessary, they would be actively harmful. Here’s why.  Read more »

   Filed under: G20, Public spending, Tax, Transactions tax | 4 Comments »

The Financial Times reported today that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while pushing for substantial cuts in the German public deficit, would also be seeking a European-level financial transactions tax (FTT) by 2012. This demonstrates that the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in South Korea last week may have reduced the chances of getting a global tax, but has simultaneously made a European tax more likely. The UK’s coalition government is committed to a unilateral bank levy, and the Belgians who are taking over the Presidency at the end of this month (along with the Austrians) are also already committed to a European FTT.

   Filed under: Europe, G20, Transactions tax | Comments Off

The G20 Finance Ministers meeting this weekend in Busan, South Korea has just decided to turn its back on the unemployed and the poor, and retreat to the economic orthodoxies that led to the last recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Chris Giles,  writing for the Financial Times, reports that the communique just issued abandons the idea of a co-ordinated bank levy (although allowing it to go ahead in individual countries), and abandons support for fiscal stimuli, preferring instead to advocate public expenditure cuts . The market has won, and we will all suffer an age of austerity as a result. The only strongly dissenting voice was the US, which is still worried about growth. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wrote to the G20:

“Concerns about growth as Europe makes needed policy adjustments threaten to undercut the momentum of the recovery,” he wrote, adding that fiscal tightening won’t “succeed unless we are able to strengthen confidence in the global recovery.”

Ahead of the summit, the International Trade Union Confederation called for no withdrawal of fiscal stimuli (ie no to cuts in public expenditure) until the unemployment crisis is over, as well as re-regulation of the finance sector and a financial transactions tax, and greater transparency and consultation with civil society on behalf of the Financial Stability Board.

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, G20, Recession, Unemployment | 1 Comment »

The G20 labour ministers, meeting in Washington earlier this week, have come up with a decent list of recommendations to get the world back to work, and strengthen our fragile economic recovery. Yet with treasuries and the IMF sharpening their budget cutting knives, will these recommendations just hang in the air like so much volcanic ash? Read more »

   Filed under: Election, Financial crisis, G20, Globalisation, Labour market, Recession, Vulnerable workers | 2 Comments »

Deemed irrelevant prior to the financial crisis, the IMF was given enormous powers by the G20 to resolve it. But in light of statements it made earlier this week, trade unions are wondering whether world leaders have put a fox in charge of the hen house.

At the end of April, the IMF will give an interim report to G20 Finance Ministers on their efforts to build “strong, sustainable and balanced growth” and outline options on how the Banks should help pay for the mess they got us in. In a worrying omen of what their conclusions might be John Lipsky, the second in charge at the IMF, said earlier this week, that to drive growth, “…liberalization of goods and labor markets and the removal of tax distortions… should be pursued vigorously”. As the global trade union movement’s statement of priorities for the meeting makes clear, the world is crying out for millions of green and decent jobs, not the cutting of taxes and slashing of workers’ rights. Read more »

   Filed under: Financial crisis, G20, Globalisation, Human rights, International development, Investment, Labour market, Transactions tax, Unemployment, Vulnerable workers | 1 Comment »

Today the OECD published its annual statement of how much each country’s government gives in overseas aid, and the big news is that the pledges made at the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005 are not being met – to the tune of at least $22 billion a year. The Robin Hood Tax could bridge the gap and then some, so there is still time to produce enough overseas aid to meet the Millennium Development Goals that are due to be achieved by 2015.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is right to note that progress has been made (Britain for one is keeping its Gleneagles pledge), and that campaigners have something to be proud of. But we must go further and, as he also notes, we need a Financial Transactions Tax to plug the shortfall (a global tax could deliver $100 billion a year for international development which would more than meet the shortfall on the $50 billion a year promised at Gleneagles  - but then, that wasn’t enough anyway.) Read more »

   Filed under: G20, International development, Transactions tax | Comments Off