The representatives of the Foundation participated again in the annual meeting of European free market circles - the European Resource Bank Meeting. For this purpose, Ireneusz Jabłoński and Marcin Nowacki visited Tbilisi, Georgia, from 9 till 12 October.

The European Resource Bank meeting is Europe's largest convention of liberal, conservative and free-market think-tanks from the old continent and the US. This year's fifth edition was held by the New Economic School Georgia.

The participants took part in multiple panel discussions and lectures dedicated to strategies of implementing liberal reforms. The guest of honour of the meeting was Mr. Lado Gurgenidze (on the photo with Mr. Ireneusz Jabłoński).

Other crucial topic of the event was the global financial crisis and different methods of saving the banking sector. The common declaration on this subject has been signed, passing the negative opinion on governmental intervention in this field (text below).

More data on www.rbeurope.org.

 

Government Made the Financial Crisis; Let Us Not Make It Worse

Representatives of economic policy organizations throughout Europe released the following recommendations to deal with the global financial crisis.

The basic cause of the global financial problem was that the U.S. government, along with other governments, engaged in excessive credit expansion and pressured banks to make loans - particularly home loans - to unqualified buyers.

Therefore:
1. We believe that responding to the credit crunch by adding more liquidity in the market is a short-term fix that will only help banks that were mismanaged, and will fuel inflation.

2. We believe governments should facilitate, and not hinder, the process of the market determining prices that realistically reflectsupply and demand.

3. When hard times come, governments should share the burden with businesses and consumers and not try to insulate themselves from the harm they have caused.

4. Governments should refrain from rescuing particular businesses or business projects. The cost of saving businesses that failed will fall on the shoulders of others, through increased taxes, inflation, or capital misallocation.

Free market capitalism has proven to be the only system which leads to sustained economic progress and respect of human liberty.

Signed,

Lithuanian Free Market Institute, Lithuania
Institute for Global Economic Growth, US
Institute for Fee Enterprise (IUF), Germany
Institute for Market Economics, Bulgaria
Friedrich von Hayek Foundation, Slovakia
New Economic School, Georgia
Liberalny Institute, Czech Republic
Hayek Institute, Austria
Adam Smith Research Centre, Poland
European Center for Economic Growth, Bruxelles and Vienna
Institute for Research on Economic and Fiscal Issues (IREF), France
Contribuables Associes, France
Instituto Bruno Leoni, Italy
Project Lodz Foundation, Poland
Association for Liberal Thinking, Turkey
CATO Institute, USA
Mises Scientific Research Centre, Belarus
Estonian Free Society Institute, Estonia
Institute for Economic Studies, France
The TaxPayer's Alliance, UK
Ludwig von Mises Institute, Poland
Competitive Enterprise Institute, USA
Ioan Barbus Foundation for Freedom, Tradition and Capitalism, Romania
Liberales Institut, Switzerland
Institut Constant de Rebecque, Switzerland
European Taxpayers Association
Association pour la Liberte Ecomique et le Progres Social, France
Paneuropabewegung, Austria
Liberte Cherie, France
Conservative Institute of M. R. Stefanik, Slovakia
European Policy Network, UK