PRESS RELEASE
Italy Consumer Federation
Calls for New Bretton Woods
Nov. 15, 2006 (EIRNS)—A leading Italian consumers organization, Adusbef, has published a report, signed by its chairman Elio Lannutti and by Paolo Raimondi, chairman of the International Civil Rights Movement Solidarity, exposing international rating agencies as a tool of financial speculation and calling for a New Bretton Woods (NBW) reorganization of the international financial system. The report includes a passage on the NBW resolution voted by the Italian Parliament in 2005, and the Adusbef website published a note by Raimondi identifying Lyndon LaRouche as the initiator of the NBW proposal.
Some media, like Wall Street Italia, ran the Adusbef report story with the headline: "Rating Agencies: They Are 90% Wrong." This refers to a statistical survey by Adusbef exposing Moody's, Standard & Poors, and Fitch. Adusbef found that of 1000 "reports" issued by Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch, 910 proved to be wrong, and only 90 correct. We have been told that as a consequence, those rating agencies are now afraid of a wave of legal suits from small stockholders.
The Adusbef report was motivated by the recent downgrading of the Italian public debt, to which they refer. The report documents how the three major rating agencies ("The Three Sisters") are owned by private corporations which, in turn, are controlled by banks whose main business is derivative gambling. The report gives ample figures about the derivative bubble. "The Three Sisters ... are an integral part of the problem that is driving the economic world towards the crash and systemic crisis, with devastating consequences for the entire economic, social and political life of our planet," the report says.
In the abovementioned box published on the Adusbef web page, Paolo Raimondi writes: "Today there is a large international campaign going on, to lead to a New Bretton Woods—i.e., a conference of heads of state and government able to define new rules for stability and economic development of nations and peoples. Initiated in 1994 by some economists and politicians, among them U.S. Democrat Lyndon LaRouche, the campaign has already collected support from more than a thousand members of Parliament, government representatives and economists, among them President Clinton, Mexico's José López Portillo, Malaysia's Mahathir, and also tens of Italian members of Parliament from both sides. The Italian Parliament has already undertaken a series of initiatives, in the form of motions, supporting the project. It concerns a reorganization of the system that includes, among other things, the elimination of financial speculation and the derivatives bubble, and the creation of new credit structures to promote large infrastructure, technological and productive investments."
