The food price crisis and the financial crisis are the result of years of ultra-liberal deregulation that can be traced back to the crimes against humanity committed against native Americans and Africans to maximise profit. Investors and speculators looking for the highest profits have used “financial engineering” in order to move large amounts of capital between countries and continents. These speculative, so-called "financial products or services" brought in huge profits but nothing was produced. Their value increased as a result of mere expectation that the financial system would continue to overvalue these "products" and "services."

With the de-regulation of the financial system came a disconnection from a "real economy" based upon agriculture, manufacturing, and the hard work of citizens. The system became based upon a speculative bubble that relied upon the irresponsible trade of "products" and "services" on the financial markets. When this bubble burst, it affected the global economy from top to bottom, not just the financial markets and the banks.

Pursuant to its statutes, the World Trade Organisation must hold an assembly with all its members every two years. Practice is quite far from statutes. Indeed, due to the difficulties encountered by negotiations to successfully accomplish the Doha Round, there has not been a meeting of all the WTO members since the last WTO conference took place in December 2005. In order to convene a plenary meeting without running the risk of a new negotiations setback, the Director-General of the WTO had called up the representatives of the 153 countries members of the WTO and the 56 countries having the status of observers not for a negotiation session but a discussion meeting and assessment of multilateral negotiations.