This informal dinner event, organized by Aspen Institute Italia, focused on global governance issues and involved the participation – as guest speakers – of Joseph Stiglitz, economist and professor at Columbia University and Nobel Laureate, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, President of the OFCE in Paris, Meghnad Desai, Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics, and Rakesh Mohan, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Around the time of the Aspen debate, these four international guests – who are members of an ad hoc United Nations Committee currently preparing a report on global governance – also took part in a “Shadow G-N” meeting in Rome organized in cooperation with the Luiss University, which was represented at the Aspen event by its Rector, Massimo Egidi, and by Mariasilvia Ciola, Head of International Relations.
The Italian participants in the talk-debate were Vittorio Grilli, Fabrizio Saccomanni and Umberto Vattani.
Aspen Institute Italia was represented by Carlo Scognamiglio, Angelo Maria Petroni, Gianni De Michelis and Marta Dassù.
The opening address by Joseph Stiglitz expressed a degree of skepticism regarding the outcomes of the G-20 summit held in London and underlined the need for the crisis in the real economy to be effectively seized as an opportunity for a more radical reform of global governance systems. The discussion then focused on trade issues (with Stiglitz and Desai maintaining that the risk of resorting to protectionism is greater than thus far indicated) and on the possibility of establishing a new monetary framework.
As is widely known, this latter proposal has been expressly raised for discussion by the Governor of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan. According to a paper presented in recent months by the Chinese, concerns over a possible devaluation of the US dollar need to be addressed by stepping up the role of Special Drawing Rights, the IMF’s “artificial” currency, with the IMF’s currency “basket” becoming, in the long term, the new international monetary reserve mechanism. This view met with some support (the argument being that this kind of arrangement is also favorable to Europe, which otherwise risks being marginalized by a China-US deal). Other participants, however, remained skeptical, stating that the US is likely to revert to an equilibrium similar to that in place before the crisis – which, accordingly, will produce no change (if not marginal) to existing fiscal imbalances.
