Today The New York Times reports that depositors in Hong Kong are lining up to pull their deposits from their local banks due to Wall Street’s recent turmoil. We live in a global market where a financial sneeze in one community can lead to a global flu. However we still do not have a functioning international entity committed to promoting economic freedom and the global prosperity it creates. Heritage scholar Dr. Kim Holmes has an answer:

America should take the lead in establishing a Global Economic Freedom Forum (GEFF) with the heads of state from 20 to 25 of those nations. Each year, they could hold a summit to come up with common solutions to such problems as international debt, weak financial institutions and poverty in developing nations.

A common economic-policy front from a group as successful and diverse as the GEFF would have real political value. The world would take notice of a summit photograph in which heads of state from Bahrain, Japan, the U.K., Chile, Estonia, the U.S. and Mauritius stand side by side in consensus on the global economy.

It also could help break up logjams at the WTO and other international economic and financial institutions. While a GEFF would not replace the WTO, it could act as a caucus there, helping to better coordinate its members’ trade policies. Its members could do the same at the U.N., challenging the global-governance philosophy so prevalent in Turtle Bay.

But the most important benefit would be the message: Finally, there would be a world stage from which to shout that economic freedom brings the greatest prosperity for the largest number of people.