On Friday, 1st November, Ann Pettifor, Director of Jubilee Research at the New Economics Foundation, joined Roberto Bissio of Social Watch in Uruguay; Evelyn Herfskens of UNDP and Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist in addressing the UN General Assembly.

The subject of the session was Managing Globalisation. Ms Pettifor defined globalisation as the new dominance of finance capital over the global economy; caused, she argued by the US's growing deficit, and its need to borrow from the world's capital markets to finance that deficit. She noted that from 1945 to 1970 the US and other western economies had been major exporters of capital; from 1970 onwards, they became major importers of capital.

It was this reversal in capital flows that lay at the heart of "globalisation". Ms Pettifor called for the regulation of capital markets; and argued that such regulation was a necessary pre-condition for reforming international financial institutions, and for restoring policy autonomy to governments.