Professor Paul Dembinski outlined four possible parallel strategies for ‘moralizing and domesticating finance’: working on individual behaviour; creating the right corporate mechanisms; the right regulatory framework; and finally, the utopian option of ‘Jubilee’ the forgiveness of debts, springing from the Jewish tradition.

‘We must combat the reigning thought-patterns,’ said a French farmers’ leader, speaking in Caux, Switzerland today. Christiane Lambert, the first woman president of a French farmers’ union, pleaded for a logic of sustainable development and against a liberal fundamentalism, which deepens economic divides and runs against the integrity that is the theme of this summer’s Caux conferences.

The focus on short-term results in business is a disaster, according to the head of an Indian industrial giant. Dr. J.J Irani, Director on the board of the giant Indian multi-national Tata, an empire of more than 80 companies, 32 of them publicly quoted, in fields from steel, tea, power generation, cars and trucks, chemicals, hotels, telecoms, software was giving the 4th Caux Lecture of the 2006 conference season on ‘The Importance of Trust and Integrity in Corporate Leadership in an Emerging Market’, in Caux, Switzerland, today.

Professor Guy Berger, from the School of media and journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa last month won the Nat Nakasa Award for ethics in journalism. At the time of apartheid in his country, Professor Berger spent three years in prison and then five years in exile – so his personal biography underlined the coherence of his message to the Caux – Initiatives of Change session on ‘Trust and Integrity in the Global Economy’ that started yesterday.

Bernard Cassen, Director General of Le Monde Diplomatique, architect of the Porto Alegre World Social Forums and founder of the ATTAC movement for economic justice today declared that ‘liberal globalization is a social failure that accentuates inequalities’.

Three participants in the ‘Farmers’ Dialogue’ a programme of Initiatives of Change spoke today of the urgent needs for food – and the urgent needs for reforms in food policies, notably in support of small-holder farmers in Africa.

Lech Walesa, former President of Poland and founder of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland, today paid tribute to the role of ‘a small group of journalists’ in helping to overthrow Poland’s communist dictatorship in 1989.

Lech Walesa, Polish President from 1990 to 1995, Nobel Peace laureate, and one of the founders of the Solidarity trade union movement in Poland that hastened the downfall of the communist regime, spoke last night to the 32nd annual Caux Conference for Business and Industry on the theme of “Globalization: Closing the Gaps”.

A British Labour politician and a Swiss engineer told the CCBI conference today that business has a vital role in world development.

Jean-Daniel Gerber, the Swiss State Secretary for Economic Affairs tonight spoke of the ‘major challenge of poverty reduction’ and the urgent need for reforms in the rich world’s economies.