"What opportunities for citizens' action exist around the process?" , asks EURODAD's Bretton Woods II conference FAQs , and answers: "Citizens groups are signing the statement calling for an open process. This is a major and rare opportunity to make proposals for a new financial architecture. It is an excellent time for citizens' groups to make proposals about policies and about institutions that are equitable and inclusive and break decisively with the current model."

Theses:

  1. Our internet is an extension of our literacy. It is the world's public library. It cannot be owned by somebody else than ourselves.
  2. The library and the internet are 'equitable and inclusive and break decisively with the current model'. They are open spaces.
  3. To open the process and lay the necessary new foundations of public finances, let's use what we have: the library and the internet.
  4. Let the librarians keep the books. -- The librarians of the Sumerians kept the books 'of what they owed and what they owned' as well as 'the text of hymns, prayers and incantations'[1]. Re-unite what has been separated ever since. For instance, make the financial data of Clearstream and SWIFT available on the public internet. In general, re-combine the financial bookkeeping with the transmission of the cultural heritage.
  5. Libraries, not bombs! Bretton Woods I took place just before the nuclear nightmare begun. Bretton Woods II must put an end to it.
  6. Bretton Woods II needs to agree on a global taxation of financial transactions (FTT) to aid the citizens. The FTT will make the financial world more transparent, generate revenue for library and other development, and curtail financial speculation.
Footnote:

[1] Quoted from: Fred Lerner: The Story of Libraries from the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age. New York 2002, pp 13-14.