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national levels. In town squares, parks and on street corners, neighbors discuss ways of making their democracies more accountable and filling in where government has failed. They are talking about creating a "citizen's congress" to demand transparency and accountability from politicians.

They are discussing participatory budgets and shorter political terms, while organizing communal kitchens for the unemployed and planning film festivals in the streets. The President, who was appointed when his elected predecessors resigned from the position, is scared enough of this growing political force that he has begun calling these asambleas "antidemocratic."

But there is reason to pay attention. The asambleas are also talking about how to kick-start local industries and renationalize assets. And they could go even further. Argentina, as the obedient pupil for decades, miserably failed by its IMF professors, shouldn't be begging for loans; it should be demanding reparations.

The IMF had its chance to run Argentina. Now, it's the people's turn.

Naomi Klein is author of No Logo. www.nologo.org

Viewpoint

When I attended an Economic Conference in Luxembourg, I traveled home on the plane with the Religious Affairs correspondent of the Guardian newspaper.

He said to me, "Those people at the conference do not seem to realise there is no place for ethics in economics. All is fair in love, war and business."

We must come to realise that fair trading is no longer possible now that we use debt as our currency.

We now live at a time when we are in the midst of commercial warfare. It is a war more deadly and disastrous than military warfare because there is no Geneva Convention, no Amnesty International keeping tabs, it is a global war and it goes on for ever.

Unless we know this and appreciate the full significance of this war, we shall fail in any attempt to introduce ethics.

Corporate power is forced, by law, to serve the shareholder. When we realise that the law is a money-lenders� charter we can begin to understand. Shareholders are people who have loaned their money to the company. Banks are the biggest shareholders in all these corporations.

They create money by lending.

Those who create and issue a nation's currency have absolute power over that nation and are above the law and above Parliament.

Thus the moneylenders rule the world and we have global laws on economics that do not vary from nation to nation.

Those laws deny the possibility of ethics. Fair trading has been turned into commercial warfare.

It is impossible to survive through honest trading when debt is the currency. Until we restore an honest monetary system in which our Government has the sole right to create and issue the currency, we shall have no hope whatsoever of establishing a green economy.

Dr. E.C. Hamlyn.

President, International Association for Monetary Reform. 3rd May, 2002