Skyrocketing food and fuel prices are forcing national governments all over the world to take measures to protect the production and supply of essential commodities for the sake of their people’s welfare, over the loud protests of the City of London financiers who insist on total global free trade, with no checks on the commodities speculation that is driving prices up, and bankrupting people.

(To date, Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith have continued the Howard Government’s policy of unquestioning and enthusiastic support for the City of London’s free trade position, despite the damage oil speculation is doing to Australia’s economy.)

That fight is now coming to a head over the growing international support for the proposal of Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti to take emergency action to shut down commodity speculation, using the European Treaty.

Tremonti is a supporter of American physical economist Lyndon LaRouche’s call for scrapping globalisation and establishing a “New Bretton Woods” regulated international monetary and financial system; Tremonti was described in the July 7 Neue Züercher Zeitung as a “self-declared admirer of French mercantilist Colbert [who] has already called also for a new Bretton Woods and protective tariffs to bring globalisation under control.”

Tremonti has proposed using Article 81 of the European Treaty to:

• Intervene through European and American anti-trust authorities against speculation;
• Increase the margin requirement on futures trading from 5% to 50%.

His proposal was presented to this week’s Group of Eight meeting in Japan by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who said that the European Treaty provides the EU Commission with “all legal instruments to intervene and block speculation”; it also went before the European Union Economic and Finance Ministers’ meeting in Brussels this week.

His idea has been endorsed by one of the world’s leading finance experts, former US Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration, Robert Rubin, who called for “increasing capital margin deposits for futures”, at the Aspen Institute on July 1st. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has also moved, stressing in interviews at the G8 Summit that “the existing architecture of economic relations among the main participants is inadequate,” twice saying that today’s rampaging inflation crisis stemmed from “markets that are not so well regulated.”

Entrenched opposition to Tremonti’s plan is coming from the City of London, which is the centre of international financial speculation. The international business editor of London’s Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, freaked on July 4 that Tremonti’s proposal has France’s backing, and thus could indeed be approved by the European Council, which would badly hurt the City of London. “Article 81 decisions can in theory be pushed through by qualified majority vote, overriding a veto by the British and Irish governments. Any such attempt to restrict the futures and derivatives markets would have a major impact on the City of London and Dublin’s financial industry. It is far from clear whether Britain could muster a blocking alliance in the current anti-market climate.”

To read more about the worldwide revolt against free trade click here.
For a free copy of the DVD “1932”, which provides the real history of British free trade, click here.