You know I have to say for those that have RE on ignore or do not take the time to try to figure out which direction he is coming from because of the hyperbole that you may perceive you might be missing out on some good philosophy.
So what if you don't agree. Politics aside the US of A has done a lot of good but they have also done a lot of bad.JMO! Remember it is an opinion not a FACT! IMO there has been economic warfare for many years. Here is a potential example of what RE MAY mean when referring to corrupt practices concerning the dollar and banking.
Old enough in time to not be misconstrued as a political post of today's times:
In the early part of this century a rather peculiar phrase - "Banana Republic" - entered our vocabulary and became a part of the American lexicon, spreading so far and wide in the popular mindset that millions and millions of teenagers today proudly wear clothes purchased from stores which bear that label. To modern young people, the term "Banana Republic" means chic, and is connected to the "Smart Set," the "In Crowd" and "The Clique." But it was not always so.
The term was originally coined by "muckrakers" to describe what they considered to be the iniquitous and almost criminal goings-on of certain rapacious and predatory American companies in the Caribbean and Central America - particularly, the behavior of the United Fruit Company. The United Fruit Company had been formed in the early part of the twentieth century by a group of Boston investors associated with the First National Bank of Boston who were connected to Latin American fruit, sugar, coffee and railroad interests. These investors came early on to realize that huge profits - profits far beyond what were possible here in the United States - could be made by exploiting what we today call the "Third World" or the "Developing World." These countries, they realized, were not burdened by restrictive tax laws, regulations on labor conditions, rules on banking practices and usury, etc. as were companies whose operations were indigenous to the United States. As a result, enormous "returns on investment" were possible. The countries in which United Fruit came to operate were called "banana republics" after the fruit which the company harvested there for export back to the United States and later into Europe. United Fruit was closely linked to the Rockefeller holdings.
UNITED FRUIT'S INVESTORS
In addition to the creme de la creme of Boston society and Rockefeller banking interests, there were other very important people who were associated with the company; for example, there was Nelson Rockefeller's former assistant at the State Department, John Moors Cabot (part of the Cabot-Lodge nexus), who owned a large block of stock in United Fruit (he later wrangled for himself a convenient ambassadorship to Guatemala); then there was John's brother, Thomas C. Cabot, Jr., who briefly served as president of United Fruit; there was also John J. McCloy, later closely associated with the CIA and the World Bank; there was also John Foster Dulles, head of the Rockefeller Foundation and later head of the U.S. State Department, and his brother Allen, who became CIA Chief under President Eisenhower - and on and on ad infinitum. It was a Who's Who of some of this nation's wealthiest families - pretty much the same ivy league crowd which later took over the CIA and the State Department after the Second World War.
So powerful did the company become over the years in Latin America, that in certain countries, particularly Guatemala and Nicaragua, it set up and put down governments at will on the basis of how these governments related to the "bottom-line" of the company's ledgers: those governments which served the interests of United Fruit (and, ipso facto, the company's investors back in Boston) were supported; those governments which did not were ruthlessly and mercilessly squashed - usually with the help of the U.S. consulate in the area.
UNITED FRUIT'S SHAKE-DOWN TECHNIQUES
AND THE SEARCH FOR "COMPLIANT WORKERS"
The "shake-down" techniques "pioneered" by United Fruit consisted of relating the financial interests of the company to those of the host country's local military and business communities, and then combining with them to seize the national government and subordinate it to the accomplishment of their own aims (which meant, of course, their mutual enrichment). Among the objectives which served the interests of United Fruit were special tax privileges, wage controls (which usually meant subsistent wages for everyone except the company's "managerial class"), a "favorable investment climate" (i.e., the "free flow" of capital in and out of the country so as to insure that profits would revert to the investors back in Boston and not to the indigenous population), and most importantly, compliant and "willing" workers - which meant, naturally, no unions.
What all this translated into insofar as the great majority of the population was concerned (approximately 80 percent of the populace) was the destruction of their indigenous economy [which, while it had not provided a high living standard (though in many ways it had provided a standard of living comparable to that enjoyed by settlers in the American rural west in the latter half of the nineteenth century), it had not reduced them to a state of "indentured servitude"], the reduction of the peasants into a kind of "farm slavery" in the service of United Fruit's local plantations, and their concomitant "marginalization" insofar as the political process was concerned. "Democracies" in such countries were "open" only insofar as the 20 percent or so of the population which had combined their economic interests with United Fruit. The rest of the population was "cut out" of the political process much in the same fashion that blacks were cut out of the political process in the American South from the 1870s to the early 1950s.
DEMOCRACY AS A THREAT TO
U.S. CORPORATE INTERESTS
Naturally, the broadening of the political process by reformist-minded local politicians to include the 80 percent of the population which had been left out of the financial benefits of United Fruit's "new economic order" were discouraged - even to the point of using terror. As noted by Edward A Jesser, Jr., chairman of the United Jersey Banks, in a speech to the American Bankers Association, democracy was clearly not conducive to a "favorable business climate:"
"Quick and tough decisions can be made in a relatively short time in a ... (military dictatorship) compared to the difficulty there is in reaching agreement on what actions to take in a democracy."[1]
Democratic threats by populist reformers aimed at the interests of foreign investors - i.e., efforts directed at improving the lot of the poor and oppressed, including the encouragement of independent trade unions - were dealt with harshly. Take, for example, what happened in Guatemala when the agrarian reformer, Jacobo Arbenz, was elected in 1952 to the Guatemalan presidency in one of the few honest elections that Guatemala has ever had. After taking office, Arbenz embarked on a program of land redistribution that included expropriating uncultivated land. The largest owner of uncultivated land in Guatemala was, of course, Boston's United Fruit Company. The purpose of the land reform was to return to the peasants the land which had earlier been stolen from them by greedy Guatemalan businessmen - with the active encouragement of United Fruit - who had then eagerly turned around and re-sold the land to United Fruit. On paper, it all looked legal. It gave title deed to the land to United Fruit. But the people who had sold the land to United Fruit were the same people who had stolen it from the peasants - and all this was no secret to United Fruit's investors. Indeed, behind the whole unseemly land sale - from the original expropriation of the land from the peasants to its re-sale to United Fruit - were the unscrupulous, unprincipled, and venal hands of United Fruit's investors back in Boston. |
