French president calls for 'new Bretton Woods'
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday called for a "new Bretton Woods" to boldly reform the financial system. "Today, we need a new Bretton Woods. We cannot have, on the one hand, a multipolar world and, on the other, a single benchmark currency across the globe," Sarkozy said in his keynote address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos.
"We will continue to make our economy run risks greater than it can bear, to encourage speculation and to sacrifice our long-term future, if we do not change the regulation of our banking system and the rules for accounting," he said.
He stressed that people should not look at the post-crisis world in the same way as before. "Each of us must hold the conviction that the world of tomorrow can not be the same as the world of yesterday."
Measures must be taken to change world governance, to regulate the economy and to clean up public finances, otherwise the world's recovery can not be sustainable, he warned.
He added that globalization had "skidded out of control" and there is a necessity for rebuilding capitalism by restoring its moral dimension.
The French leader also expressed support to a reform plan proposed by his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama to limit the size of banks and curb bonuses and risky trading.
He added that France would place the reform of the international monetary system on the agenda when it chairs the Group of 8 and Group of 20 next year.
More than 2,500 leaders from over 90 countries and regions, representing business, government, civil society, academia and the media, are attending the five-day Davos meeting.
