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Global leaders gather in Bretton Woods, NH

David Brancaccio Apr 8, 2011
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Global leaders gather in Bretton Woods, NH

David Brancaccio Apr 8, 2011
HTML EMBED:
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STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Today top economists and financial experts are back at Bretton Woods, NH to look at what still needs to be done to fix current global financial system woes. In 1944, world leaders met in in the same place to rebuild a world financial system destroyed by the Great Depression and World War II.

We continue Marketplace’s Economy 4.0 series, and special correspondent David Brancaccio reports.


DAVID BRANCACCIO: The rewiring work on the financial system has gone on for two years now. Banks will have to keep bigger cushions of cash to prepare for the worst; the huge derivatives market will have some oversight. But are we finally on safe ground?

ROBERT JOHNSON: The world financial system is still in disrepair.

Robert Johnson is head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking that’s organizing the conference.

JOHNSON: We’ve barely scratched the surface. On derivatives reform, on the question of handling too big to fail institutions, we have really done nothing.

This new Bretton Woods is not a policy-making gathering, although ideas discussed are likely to inform future policy with influential experts on hand such as Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and at least two winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Among the thorny issues to be explored: Do governments actually have the power to regulate financial excesses when money so easily crosses borders?

In Bretton Woods, NH, I’m David Brancaccio for Marketplace.

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