SUNS  4357 Thursday 21 January 1999

Geneva, Jan 20 (Someshwar Singh) -- The International Metalworkers Federation (IMF), with affiliates in 95 countries and more than 20 million workers in manufacturing, has called for immediate intervention by governments to check the financial globalisation and prevent a new
world recession with unpredictable social consequences.

The Geneva-based IMF said that with the recent crisis in Brazil and other emerging markets, it is the entire international monetary system that is being rocked by financial globalisation and that unregulated financial markets can plunge the whole planet into a prolonged economic
turmoil.
"More than ever, we have good reasons to question the liberal creed and challenge the arrogance of the professionals of finance," said Marcello Malentacchi, the IMF General Secretary. "Markets left to themselves do not bring prosperity but chaos, and recent developments show the fallacy of those who have been praising the virtues of liberal orthodoxy. In 1998, economic growth was halved, manufacturing output contracted and unemployment reached new heights."

According to the IMF, workers have been laid off in masses, partly as a result of job-destroying mergers, and social distress is affecting an ever-growing proportion of the population. The present fiscal and monetary policies, decided by a narrow group of financiers and sophisticated money practitioners, are more concerned with the protection of and return on financial capital than they are with the protection and improvements of living standards.

"So far, governments have adopted a wait-and-see attitude and played down the adverse effects of financial instability and turbulence," Malentacchi noted. "Allowing finance to develop without restriction amounts to promoting speculation which is detrimental to productive activity. Governments have to make the interests of workers prevail over those of financial markets and transnational companies."