Credit crunch could be 'final blow' to global poor

Ottawa Citizen , Oct. 25, 2008

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned his top lieutenants yesterday
that the global financial crisis jeopardized everything the United Nations has done to help the world's poor and hungry. "It threatens to undermine all our achievements and all our progress," Mr. Ban told a meeting of UN agency chiefs devoted to the crisis. At a meeting also
attended by the heads of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Mr. Ban said the credit crunch that has stunned markets worldwide compounded the food crisis, the energy crisis and Africa's development crisis. "It could be the final blow that many of the poorest of the
world's poor simply cannot survive," he said, in one of his bleakest assessments of the impact of the financial turmoil.

James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4