Saturday, February 25, 2012

Sovereign debt or common wealth?

Interesting read from the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, a thinktank founded by former Research in Motion Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie in 2001, where our previous Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin believes time has come to create a global Chapter 11 process or what he calls a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism.

Specializing in the world of international governance, the Centre for International Governance Innovation uses interdisciplinary research and analysis, policy and innovations and communications to move ideas affected by the global aspects of the economy, energy and the environment via development and security that ensures global sustainability, addresses gaping inequality and safeguards human rights. Pure to its mandate advocating for an intellectual knowledge to power exchange, no matter how incremental or eventual, we finally have an global or international political economic debate forming on the restructuring of the international financial market and system after this recent global economic shock and crisis with a North American champion to boot. In these days of decision, we as one global community have grown economically beyond questions of moral hazard and free ridership, issues that can go on in the now with impunity and can be resolved at to be held future rounds of talks. Though I personally believe the current trauma is more systemic insofar as the failure of institutional checks, controls and counteraction against greed, Martin is right that a great starting point is to rally and climax from, if only to regain lost confidence in a broken system temporarily before looking to more permanent and equitable one in the not so distant future.

Indeed, the interdependent global economy and its various institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has shown itself to be in desperate need for many rules and regulations, such as this proposed sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, at the sacrificial loss of national security and sovereignty, the question however today is this enough?