Ainda não tive tempo de ler o paper de 12 paginas publicado no L`Osservatore.Mas, independente do seu contéudo, ele é muito bem vindo. Quem sabe o Presidente abre uma exceção e lê o paper. Não era este o pedido, por ele feito, ao Papa?
"The Holy See has called on countries and institutions to push aside national agendas and work urgently to create what it called a new covenant for international finance.
The Vatican's appeal is directed at those attending a major development summit in Doha this week to coordinate efforts to counter the worldwide economic turmoil.
In a 12-page paper published last Sunday in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican said the 29 November-2 December conference in Qatar should give a more prominent voice to poorer countries than what was ceded at the recently completed Group of 20 (G20) meeting in the United States. The US-based talks included representatives of 20 large industrialised economies, but no poor economies.
The Vatican paper was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and "approved by the Secretariat of State". Trade analysts said that the document's publication just days before the start of the UN development conference in Doha could have an impact on the agenda at the talks.
"It is easy to imagine a situation where policymakers for developing economies, especially highly Catholic developing economies in Latin America and in some parts of Africa and Asia, will feel their hand is strengthened by the Vatican's views," said Javier Noriega, chief economist and trade analyst with Milan investment bankers Hildebrandt and Ferrar."
The Vatican's statement cast the global financial problems as "an inescapable moral issue" that exposed an "ethical dimension to the economy". It said this created a situation where the Church, "with its rich array of moral principles, can and must make a contribution".
The document said the economic problems stemmed at least in part from too much economic leveraging in major markets (using debt or borrowed capital to increase a return on an investment), and it called for "a new pact for international financial systems ... and a link between development and finance structures and taxation, the rules for financial markets, and the role of civil society in development finance".
Other points in the document included calls for tighter market regulation, greater financial sector transparency, the elimination of offshore financial havens, and more cross-border cooperation, as well as more aid from wealthy nations to poor ones.
Also in L'Osservatore Romano last Sunday, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, said church leaders could not ignore the "damaging human consequences" of the crisis, especially on the poor. "Any new dispensation of world economy that does not address the extreme marginalisation of rich and poor does not merit consideration," the cardinal wrote in an article. He said consideration had to be given not only to the poor in the West, but also to the "800 million people outside it who are living in absolute poverty, together with the half a billion who are chronically hungry". The cardinal said the Church "neither condemns the market nor canonises it", but he insisted those who "operate" it had to promote the common good.
Meanwhile, the Vatican's representative at the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, told the UN General Assembly on 30 October that "unbridled profiteering" and the "unscrupulous pursuit of gain at any cost" were partly to blame for the current crisis. "A lifestyle ... solely based on increased and uncontrolled consumption and not on savings and the creation of productive capital, is economically unsustainable," the envoy said."
Fonte: The Tablet,29.11.08
