Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA was recently cited in Bretton Woods speaking on the current financial crisis. This discussion was held at the International Monetary Fund/ World Bank Spring Meeting Civil Society Forum event. Read the excerpt below and follow the link to full article.

Financial crisis 10 years on. Has the response to 2008 laid the foundations for the next?

By: Miriam Brett

Since January in the USA, there has been an attempt to repeal financial regulation measures put in place following the financial crisis.

The proposed repeal of section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act – also known as Cardin-Lugar anti corruption law – poses a significant threat. This is the portion of the legislation that called for greater transparency, recording payment processes, which acted as an anti-bribery law and covered areas such as illicit financial laws, tax evasion, and corruption. 1504 was under sustained attack and repealed in the House of Representatives.

This was significant as it had been used as a model for regulation and legislative measures post crisis, and a consensus was brought about on this.

A model law could offer a different approach and a legislative remedy to deal with 51 per cent of where the world’s debt stock is marketed. The US and UK have between an 85 and 90 per cent share of the debt market, and Germany, Singapore and Japan also charting high.

There is a possibility to change New York law as a model law, to say that if ¾ of investors agrees to a structuring, we have to move things forward for debt to be arbitrated, which could offer a viable and clear path forward.

Read more here.