The Shape Of The New International Order Begins To Emerge?
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 03/2/2009
Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
Perhaps the shape of the emerging new global economic measures is beginning to emerge in odd hints and phrases here and there.
According to news reports in relation to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit to President Obama, Prime Minister Brown favours:
(a) coordinated measures to stabilise the world economy,
(b) reform and new regulation of the banking system and
(c) increase of the International Monetary Fund's firepower to help countries hard hit by the crisis.
Let’s take these one by one. Clearly (c) is not possible without enhanced contributions from one or more countries, unless the entire system for financing the IMF is going to be revamped – not impossible but, as there is no public news of what a new system for financing the IMF might be, no comment on that is possible. So let us stick to “enhanced contributions by one or more countries”. It is not clear, at this point in history, why countries would allocate their (relatively limited) financial resources to a multilateral agency rather than use those resources themselves in direct diplomacy to support their own direct interests in neighbouring or distant countries.
However, let us be optimistic and assume that at least some countries are willing to put some more of their money into the IMF system. The question is: if all the money that could possibly be provided by all the countries in the world were actually put into the IMF, would that be enough to help the number of countries that already need help – let alone the increasing number of countries that will need more and more help as the crisis worsens and before we emerge from the crisis? In other words, unless steps are taken to counter the crisis itself, providing money to the IMF itself is simply more of an effort to muddle through which will be unsuccessful.
Or let’s take item (a). It is fairly clear that countries are already “co-ordinating” as much as possible, so “co-ordination” itself doesn’t hold out much hope, unless there are new FORMS of co-ordination that are being proposed – and we have no hints at present about what such new forms of “co-ordination” might be. Some forms of co-ordination could be dangerous to human freedoms and should be rejected, as I have argued in my "Open Letter to President Obama"
That leaves item (b), which has two elements: REFORM of the banking system, and REGULATION of the banking system. Again, as we don’t know the details, it is not really possible to comment on these. So we await the details with interest. Meanwhile, suffice to say the following:
1. Reform of the Banking systems alone will not do the trick, without REFORM OF FINANCIAL AND MONETRY SYSTEMS WHICH IS NEEDED AS WELL.
2. Insofar as the banking system itself is concerned, the danger today is what we might call “over-reform” and “over-regulation”. Better to go for the “minimum necessary regulation” – and I have already proposed that that might focus on creating complete transparency in all forms of leverage (not merely in terms of supposed Value At Risk), and on creating a counter-cyclical system of leverage for banks – the requirement to loan more at crisis times, but less at times when the economy booms, in order to discourage loans and encourage investments.
3. The tax system, internationally, also needs to be reformed to encourage investments and discourage loans. Again, I have commented on this elsewhere.
