Amid all the discussion about the Iraq situation important not to lose sight of the disaster in South America. A disaster largely reflecting dollar imperialism. Still another constituency for the dethroning of "king" dollar as fast as possible.
NEW WORLD ORDER
How the World Bank and IMF are passing
the world's assets to a few corporations
[Some of the most disturbing information we have read recently is
contained in two interviews with British investigative reporter Greg
Palast of the Observer. The first is from Znet Global Economics Watch]
LLOYD HART: Is it really truly a failure when a country implodes like
Argentina just did or is it an opportunity or seen as an opportunity to
go in and grab resources dirt cheap?
GREGORY PALAST: Well this is one of the problems. Actually [former World
Bank economist Joe Stilitz] brought this up. In the IMF explosions like
in Argentina, in Brazil and in Indonesia where there are riots in the
streets. He calls them the IMF riots. They're virtually written into the
plan. In fact I have been able to obtain inside documents from the IMF
and World Bank which go through the steps. You actually see it in there
where their squeezing and squeezing a country until the point where they
know it will create an explosion as in Ecuador. They know it. And so
they use such polite terms as "We understand that these policies may
create social unrest" what they mean is a riot, that means troops move
into the street and they say "It will require firm resolve."
Firm resolve means send in the tanks to up hold these policies. What
policies? Well, let me give you some simple examples. . . Just like any
individual does you need credit to operate, so do nations. To get that
credit, it's not just good enough that they be credit worthy, they also
have to agree to what are called conditionalities of the IMF and the
World Bank. The average [number] of conditionalities is 111 for each
nation. Each nation is sent a package: "You must do this!" In the case
of Ecuador, one of the conditionalites, when the country was in terrible
shape in the 90s because the price of oil dropped, was to raise the
price of cooking gas. Now, there in the Andes, people can't cook their
food without bottled gas. It's a necessity, it's like beans, it's an
absolute necessity of life to get cooking gas to cook your food.
The IMF required Ecuador to raise the price of cooking gas by 80%. Now
that was devastating. At the same time that they were forcing the
government to lay people off. At the same time that they were reducing
public pensions. At the same time that they were devaluing the currency
so that people had less income, they were raising the price of this
basic necessity. . .
The government simply said why can't we give some of this excess gas to
our own people so they can cook their food. And the IMF said don't you
dare. . . So they raise the price of cooking gas, the Indians came out
of the hills, they started burning cars in the capital. Soon there are
troops in the streets and, yes, what was the next thing that happens?
Suddenly British Petroleum gets a license for an oil pipeline. . . With
the capital in flames this nation now was desperate for money and so
they start selling they're pipelines, selling their assets. Now is this
their plan, do they sit down and say well what we're going to do, we're
going to squeeze these people until they torch the capital and then we
can seize all their assets. I don't know if they think it out that
carefully but it happens again and again and again. And what's
interesting about Stiglitz is he said "I see a pattern here and I'm
beginning to question it" and then they said "You're not going to
question it and work with us" and he was fired. . .
LLOYD HART: Why does the US Treasury have a 51% stake in the World Bank.
GREGORY PALAST: If the US were to use it for good, that's a hell of a
lot of power. That's not such a bad idea. The problem is that it has
been pushing an agenda, which is very very, helpful to a few
corporations in corporate America. . . . Not necessarily America but
corporate America which are two quite different things. . .
Every single nation, every single nation that borrows from the IMF and
the World Bank is given the conditionality of selling off their water
systems, selling off their electric utilities. Golly, who does that
benefit? Well a big subsidiary of Enron's was Azurex, which was a
company created to absorb these newly privatized water systems. So some
one wins in this game and some one loses. And of course we're beginning
to see the big loser is now Argentina. The collapse of Argentina is a
very serious business for the globalizers because they could not point
to one single success for the Reaganite-Thatcherite plan except for
Argentina. They kept saying, here's our big success story, we have
reshaped this economy. We've gotten rid of the old Peronist labor unions
and we've gotten rid of all the State enterprises and we sold off the
state banks and this is a booming economy. Well it wasn't a booming
economy.
In 1995 the Economics Minister who also was the head of the of the
central bank, a man named Cabio embarked on a program of selling off
every thing in site to US and European corporations. Argentina was an
oil exporting nation so it sold its oil to Repsol of Spain. Buenos
Aires' water went to Azurex a subsidiary of Enron, Vivendi of France
bought up other water systems throughout the country. All of the power
lines were privatized. The labor unions were smashed and the currency
was pegged to the US dollar. Which meant that the US treasury literally
owned the currency of this nation, this was very costly to Argentina,
because they had to literally borrow these dollars to maintain their
currency.
Every peso in Argentina had to be backed by a US dollar. But it looked
like they were doing well. The reason they looked like they were doing
well for two years, which is not a long time in economic life, is
because they were selling everything in sight. Now if you sold your
house, if you sold car, you could run out and say look how rich I am,
look how successful I am. Well you've just sold your house and car,
unless your going to live out in the rain and walk every where on the
planet, your going to have to get your house and car back and your going
to have to lease them now from some one else that owns them. So suddenly
the water charges were doubled, suddenly the electricity charges went
through the roof, suddenly they had to buy their money literally from
the US treasury, buy the money at very high interest rates. While you
may pay 4 percent, 5 percent and maybe 8 percent if you're a big
corporation borrowing in us dollars. Argentina was paying 10, 20, 30
percent to borrow dollars. So it didn't take long if Argentina has to
borrow at 20 percent and it has no assets because it sold them off, it
didn't take long for this game to collapse. Pretty soon the so called
riches of selling off all the nations assets quickly disappeared. And
all that was left was the debt. Now Argentina which once fed Latin
America, was the rancher for Latin America, exporting beef, was the
bread basket for Latin America. Suddenly you've got millions people
scouring the streets for garbage to eat. . .
LLOYD HART: You're looking into Enron at the present, can you discuss
that subject a little bit.
GREGORY PALAST: I was talking to a mutual friend of George W. and Ken
Lay. His name is Teal Bivens and he is one of the Texas pioneers that
raised $100,000 to put G.W. in the White House. Teal Bivens said "look,
of course Ken Lay has special access, he's raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars for George W. Bush." And he said "He's a Texan, you dance
with dem dat brung ya.". . .
Ken Lay was put on George Bush's transition team to make suggestions on
who should be appointed to regulate his company. So he was very subtle
about it. He'd call up candidates and say here's what Enron would like.
He called up the incoming new chairman of the National Electrical
Regulatory Commission that he approved of and said I have veto over your
appointment. So what's made the Bush administration different from the
Clinton administration or even the daddy Bush administration is that
before, lobbyists had unbelievably easy access to the White House. Now
they don't have access to the White House, they're in the White House.
They don't have to lobby the administration they are the
administrations. It's a whole other level.
gregpalast.com
[The second interview was with Alex Jones in Infowars]
GP: Yea, [Stiglitz] called it briberization, which is you sell off the
water company and that's worth, over ten years, let's say that that's
worth about 5 billion bucks, ten percent of that is 500 million, you can
figure out how it works. I actually spoke to a Senator from Argentina
two weeks ago. I got him on camera. He said that after he got a call
from George W. Bush in 1988 saying give the gas pipeline in Argentina to
Enron, that's our current president. He said that what he found was
really creepy. . . that Enron was going to pay one-fifth of the world's
price for their gas and he said how can you make such an offer? And he
was told, not by George W. but by a partner in the deal, well if we only
pay one-fifth that leaves quit a little bit for you to go in your Swiss
bank account. And that's how it's done.
AJ: This is the ....
GP: I've got the film. This guy is very conservative. He knows the Bush
family very well. And he was public works administrator in Argentina and
he said, yea, I got this call. I asked him, I said, from George W. Bush.
He said, yea, November 1988, the guy called him up and said give a
pipeline to Enron. Now this is the same George W. Bush who said he
didn't get to know Ken Lay until 1994. So, you know.....
AJ: What do they do after [countries] start imploding?
GP: Well, then they tell you to start cutting your budgets. A fifth of
the population of Argentina is unemployed, and they said cut the
unemployment benefits drastically, take away pension funds, cut the
education budgets, I mean horrible things. Now if you cut the economy in
the middle of a recession that was created by these guys, you are really
going to absolutely demolish this nation. After we were attacked on
September 11, Bush ran out and said we got to spend $50 to $100 billion
dollars to save our economy. We don't start cutting the budget, you
start trying to save this economy. But they tell these countries you've
got to cut, and cut, and cut. . . |
