-->mei, wär das gut für unsere Planungen!
Ich kann mir nicht helfen, aber da hat der deutsche Beamtenwitz
mal wieder ordentlich zugeschlagen *gg*

Reuters
To avert shocks, IMF seeks early warning on wars
Thursday October 30, 1:14 pm ET
By Irwin Arieff


UNITED NATIONS, Oct 30 (Reuters) - A global early warning system for armed conflicts and other major political shocks would help the International Monetary Fund (News - Websites) keep the world economy on track, IMF Managing Director Horst Kohler said on Thursday.
"I would really be pleased if we could develop a system of early warning also in terms of political developments and armed conflict," Kohler told the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly, but he gave no specific details of the kind of mechanism he had in mind.

"We are always surprised by armed conflict and I think something has to change here," Kohler told a General Assembly debate convened to check progress with U.N. anti-poverty goals set at a Millennium Summit in New York.

Kohler described the idea as part of IMF efforts to improve its crisis management and detect vulnerabilities in the global economic system as early as possible, so as to better protect the system from such threats.

"Overall, I believe our work has contributed to the remarkable resilience of the international financial system in the face of the unprecedented shocks of the past three years," he said, adding that the IMF had also"made a positive contribution to the progress in Brazil."

Brazil obtained a $30 billion loan last year amid investor fears President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was elected in October 2002, would mismanage the economy.

That loan expires in December and the country's finance minister said on Tuesday Brazil would decide next week whether to take a new loan from the IMF.

DEFENSE SPENDING FAR OUTSTRIPS AID

Addressing the same General Assembly session, World Bank (News - Websites) President James Wolfensohn lamented that while the world's governments spent $800 billion a year on defense, just $56 billion a year was spent on foreign aid.

Official development aid was also easily outstripped by the $80 billion annually sent home by migrant workers who left their native lands to work in wealthy countries, he said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the global system required repair because for the past six years more financial resources have left poor nations than have gone into them.

"Funds should be moving from developed countries to developing countries, but these numbers tell us the opposite is happening," he said.

While foreign aid has increased in recent years, it is still falling far short of needs, he said. Foreign direct investment in the developing world is down, poor countries remain saddled with foreign debt, and trade subsidies and tariffs"are stifling the ability of poor countries to... trade their way out of poverty," Annan said.

"Despite promising investment opportunities in the developing world, and improved economic policies, fear and uncertainty are keeping resources from being deployed where they are needed most," he said.

"We must reverse this negative balance sheet and fix the system so that all countries, and all people, especially the poorest can benefit."

Francisco Thompson-Flores, deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization, noting last month's failure of WTO free trade talks in Cancun, called on governments to quickly get back to work on the most contentious issues"with a renewed sense of urgency and purpose."

"Cancun was a disappointment but not a collapse," he said."And we are hopeful good progress will have been made by the time senior officials assemble in Geneva in mid-December."