The UN is warning the global economic meltdown should prompt a major regulatory overhaul and the advent of a new global currency to replace the US dollar as the world standard. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, says the dollar’s preeminence worsens existing imbalances and further burdens debt-ridden countries. UNCTAD Director Heiner Flassbeck said the world’s leading economies have failed to introduce regulation that could take on the financial instruments that caused the meltdown.

Heiner Flassbeck: “The world, as everybody knows, is in deep economic crisis, and there is no clear signal that the world can go out very quickly. And secondly, what is the second message is that, in terms of financial regulation, not much has been achieved.”

Flassbeck also said new regulation would curb the capital flights and speculation that have devastated economies while driving up commodity prices.

Heiner Flassbeck: “The closest correlation between financialization and the movement of prices you see in agricultural commodities. Can the international community allow that, due to financial speculation, rice or wheat is driven — the price of rice or wheat is driven to a level where people are starving or people are dying of hunger? Is that acceptable?”