Short Animation on How the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Really Work!
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Monday, May 18, 2015
Football, Fatima and Fado or the Fifa-Olympic Connection
The story goes that the former and last dictator of Portugal, Salazar when asked what was necessary to rule the country responded with the three “Fs:” football, Fatima and fado. He was saying that all that he needed to control the country was sports, religion and music. Fatima, of course, stood for the religious element. The town of Fatima was where the famous three Catholic children were supposed to have seen a vision and had a message from the Virgin Mary. The apparition event took place just prior to WW1. Portuguese tradition has it that Mary’s appearance at Fatima and the public’s embracing response was the reason that Portugal was able to remain neutral during the war.
The “ F” for fado stood for the typical sad folk music popular in Portugal at the time, while the “F” for football, obviously, stood for sports. During those years Benfica was Portugal’s greatest football team and Eusebio, a famous striker, was the star. When a famous Italian team offered Eusebio a large contract to come play in Italy, Salazar prohibited it saying that Eusebio was a national treasure. Salazar knew the value of football over the masses and kept their star at home. We all remember the words of Karl Marx who said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Salazar amplified the opiate to include the music and sports industries which at the time of Salazar were still in their infancy in comparison with today. But of course the Romans and Greeks had used sports in the same way. In the time of Rome’s decline it is said that the people demanded more circus and bread as Rome was being surrounded by its enemies.
Today we could amplify the list of opiates further and include the giant central commercial centers where thousands rush every weekend to shop for the things that money can buy. These are the new temples of mammon, where the faithful go to worships the new idols. We buy gadgets that give us more time on the internet where we can watch more sports, music or religious events, have internet sex or watch movies that practice it. And yet all our things and momentary pleasure still do not satisfy the deepest yearning of our soul for truth, love and eternal happiness. Like John has said:
Love not the world neither the things of the world for all that is of the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, is not of the father but of the world. And the world passes away and the lust thereof, but whosoever doeth the will of God abideth for ever.[1]
Jesus went on to say, “A man’s life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses.”[2] James put it a different way. He said,
“Whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not,…, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”[3]
James is saying here that if we are lusting after the things of the world, or living for them only, we are committing spiritual adultery with the world. That is why we will never be ultimately happy. Man is not just a physical being. He is spiritual being and he must seek first his spiritual needs. As Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.”[4] “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”[5] In the Old Testament the Lord said through Isaiah,
“Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And you labour for that which satisfies not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline you ear, and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live.”[6]
Man is constantly trying to find happiness in the things that are not eternal and therefore in the end do not bring ultimate happiness. His amusements help him escape from the predicament he finds himself. They help him escape his life without meaning and purpose. They help him escape the daily grind of making a living and acquiring more things. In the end, he ends up empty wondering if this is all there is to life. “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” He spends his time trying to take care of and satisfy his body and its needs and desires, while neglecting his spirit, his eternal soul which will last for eternity. Like the old poem “He Fed His Body But Starved His Soul.”
There was a man that some folks called great, said he’d done good, had graveled with fate. He’d won some fame and some riches, too. But in the crowd there were those that knew; the soul of him so miserably small, that real greatness he knew not at all. For all through life he had missed the real goal, he fed his body but starved his soul.
He had no time for the little things, that so much peace and contentment brings; a faithful friend or a child’s tender look, a promise sweet from the dear Old Book, a little talk with a Friend Divine, a little walk where the wild flowers wind. He was just half a man, not well rounded, whole; who fed his body but starved his soul.
And when that day of accounting came and God’s own time death called his name; then the poor, frail, worthless, empty shell, he groomed and fed and tended so well, was left behind just an earth bound clod, while his shriveled soul went to face his God. All unprepared and paid the full toll, for he had fed his body and starved his soul.
So come my friend and take time today, to read God’s word and walk in His ways. We’ll follow the trail that higher goes, to regions where the soul larger grows. You’ll never hear them say of you then, just one of the common herd of men. So if you would be well rounded and whole, read God’s word to nourish your soul. [6a]
Are you feeding your physical body with food and drink and entertainments of the flesh to the full while your spirit is empty and longing for satisfaction? Do you feel like Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones’ famous song, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction!"[7] I can not get any satisfaction because all I am trying to do is satisfy the flesh. But the trouble is that the flesh is never satisfied. It always wants more and more is never enough. Like the proverbs say, “The eyes of man are never satisfied.”[8] No matter how many beautiful woman a man has seen, he will always look at another one. Like the rich Romans in the time of Rome’s great wealth and abundance who would attend banquets full of food and sex and alcohol. They would eat to the filling of their stomachs only to vomit it all up so they could fill it once again. Like some of the scandals of recent times of rich politicians or wealthy business well in years seeking sex with young girls hardly 18 years of age. The flesh is never satisfied, it always wants more. But as Jesus said, “The flesh profits nothing.”[8b]
But in this article I wanted to look at the World Cup and Olympics and see what kind of affect they have on the economies of the countries that host the games. I also wanted to see if these sports events are part of the spiritual web woven to catch men within its borders and prohibit them from finding the way, the truth and the life. John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman which we have talked about earlier, talks of the infrastructure contracts that third world countries are forced to accept from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.[8c] These contracts ultimately leave the country poorer than when they started. Are FIFA and the Olympic project part of the great financial sorcery to bind heavier burdens of the poor economies of the world in order to keep those economies and those peoples submissive to the international bankers?
Some time ago I did a study on the Google about the countries who had hosted World Cup and Olympic events. Two of the articles I found I have linked at the end of this post. I had seen the affects of these games in Portugal and Spain where the government invested large amounts loaned from Europe. These loans went to improve infra-structure and to build the needed stadiums in the hope of reaping the financial benefits of the games. In the end we found out that the financial benefits hardly warranted such a financial investment, and the government and people were left with a big financial loan to pay back.
That’s why we saw the manifestations in Brazil before the World Cup games as some have realized the games bring little relief to the poor and needy. They only serve to increase the wealth of the wealthy through construction contracts with some cities left with stadiums they do not know how they will pay off nor maintain. But since football is part of the web to keep men caught, as Salazar so confessed, the Internationals keep Sports as a high priority on their agenda. They want a pacific populace. They want a population which will not rise up against their masters, the financial elite. They want a population that will submit and adhere to the financial injustices perpetrated against them. They bind heavy burdens grievous to be born and they themselves touch not the burdens with one finger.[9] The bankers and politicians create big national debts and then expect the population to pay it back to them. Something is wrong with this picture, but the silent majority willingly goes to the slaughter. Sports is one of today’s opiates that keep them walking in submission to their corrupt leaders.
One of the problems today though is the Muslim youth, many of whom have not integrated into the Western society. They remain aloof and therefore out of control through the normal methods of manipulation. The religious element usually helps governments control their populations. They gain financial or influential favors because of their cooperation with the government. But radical Islamic movements from the Middle East embittered by the events that have occurred there are in this case feeding rebellion and violent acts of aggression as we have recently seen in France. Maybe that's why the next World Cup will be held in the Middle East, to counter that radical Islamic movement and bring those up and coming youths under Fifa's conformist influence.
Of course FIFA always justifies the extra expense for the host country, saying it is good for the countries pride and national identity. Local government politicians will also parrot FIFA’s mantra knowing that big money coming into the country will mean contracts for their friends and supporters and something more in their own pockets. In the end FIFA always manages to walk away richer than before, while the host country almost always has a great burden to pay at the end and often some “white elephant” stadiums that are a burden on the local economy. In recent years only Germany and the USA have had World Cup or Olympic events in which they have managed to break even. Many countries are waking up to the fact that the World Cup and Olympics are bad business.
But the truth is that for generations governments have used sports as a way to distract the population and keep them content. Sports are an amusement. They keep men from thinking about their own problems and their own inability to change their world for the better. A man may have a poor and miserable job and life, but he can find self esteem in his favorite champion who helps his team to victory over their rival. The spectator gains euphoria through the victory his team meets on the playing field. His mind is distracted from his own wretched condition and he finds a sense of meaning in his favorite champion and team.
Interestingly enough, the word amusement means “away from thinking.” During those two hours of the spectacle the fan is not thinking about his problems, but is absorbed in the game on the field, as if he himself is playing. He forgets his problems and worries and dissatisfaction with life and his government and for those moments he is amused. The word “muse” comes from the Greek for “to think” or “to ponder.” As in the word “atheist” the “a” before a word is used as a negative. A theist is a person who believes in God. An atheist is a person who does not believe in God. “Muse” means to think or ponder. “Amuse” means to not think or ponder or to be away from thinking or pondering. We seek out amusements for that very reason. They help us get away from thinking about our problems whatever they may be.
Karl Marx predicted that the poor man would eventually turn against the rich and over throw their unjust rule over the poor. Why has not this prediction come to pass when the poor far outnumber the rich? As the Caesars of Rome and as Salazar of Portugal confessed and the elite of the world know, amusements whether they be music, sports or religious events are important to control the masses and govern a nation. The rich have learned they need to share a bit of their wealth with the poor to keep him content and passively submissive. Today we have the middle class, but many believe the economic advances made in the past are today being lost. We also have politicians who are suppose to be attentive to the needs and wants of their constituents, but are actually controlled by big money and big money’s interests. As in the past it seems like it continues to be a sad day for the poor man. But let’s not think about it too much, isn't there a game today. I could surely use a beer. Are you game?
For more information look at the following links: Is Housing the World Cup Worth it Any More?
[1] 1John 2:15-17
[2] Mark 8
[3] James 4:1-4
[4] Matthew 6:33
[5] Matthew 4: 4
[6] Isaiah 55:2,3a
[6a]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciSAMY9c--A
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7pb1iGcmc4
[8] Proverbs 27:20b
[8b] John 6:63
[8c] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU
[9] Luke 11:46
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
So What Does the World Bank Do Exactly?
https://www.corbettreport.com/so-what-does-the-world-bank-do-exactly/
Corbett • 09/19/2014 • 4 Comments
James Corbett
corbettreport.com
This article originally appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter on August 16, 2014. To subscribe to the newsletter and become a member of The Corbett Report website, please sign up for a monthly or annual membershiphere.
As many have heard by now, the leaders of the so-called BRICS nations – Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa – used the occasion of the 6th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, Brazil to announce the creation of the long-awaited BRICS Development Bank. Formally the “New Development Bank,” it will be based in Shanghai and capitalized with an initial $10 billion in cash ($2 billion from each of the five founding members) and $40 billion in guarantees, to be built up to a total of $100 billion.
Immediately, the press began touting the new bank as a potential rival to the current IMF / World Bank system of infrastructure development and poverty reduction in the third world. “BRICS Development Bank Could Challenge World Bank and IMF” touts US News & World Report. “BRICS Ink $50 Billion Lender in World Bank, IMF Challenge” asserts Bloomberg. The World Bank, for its part, is downplaying the rivalry, with World Bank President Jim Young Kimopenly welcoming the bank at a recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The only competition we have is with poverty,” he told reporters at the meeting.
But all of this talk about a potential rival to the IMF and World Bank have exposed the general public’s ignorance about what exactly these institutions are and what they do. While most are familiar with the IMF and its predatory lending practices (and those who aren’t are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the “IMF riot” strategy that was developed in the third world and is now being imported to Europe), the World Bank is less scrutinized and less well understood. What is it, what does it do, and why is it important for the BRICS to challenge its hegemony in the development and poverty reduction arenas?
For the answer to that, we’ll need to examine the World Bank’s history, both the official history that it touts to the outside world and the real history of its part in plundering the developing world that it is supposedly there to help.
The Official Story
The World Bank was born along with the IMF at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that decided on the financial architecture of the post-WWII world, only at that time it was known as the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development” and was concerned primarily with post-war reconstruction of Europe. After the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947, however, its focus shifted to the non-European world where it provided development loans targeted at helping developing countries create income-generating infrastructure (power plants, seaports, highways, etc.).
From the very beginning there have been questions about the overlap of the IMF and World Bank’s respective roles. Both are committed, according to the IMF website, to “raising living standards in their member countries,” but the IMF is financial in nature, concentrating on short and medium-term loans to help countries meet balance of payment needs , while the World Bank is fundamentally a development institution, focusing on technical and financial support for specific projects or sectoral reforms. Part of the confusion is linguistic; at the first ever meeting meeting of the IMF the “father” of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes (who else?), confessed he thought the Fund should be called a bank and the Bank should be called a fund. Nevertheless, the monikers have stuck and the World Bank and IMF continue to talk the talk of global infrastructure development and poverty reduction.
Since the World Bank pivoted away from Europe to concentrate on the developing world in the late 1940s, it has lent more than $330 billion on infrastructure development projects. It currently boasts $232.8 billion in total subscribed capital, overseeing $358.9 billion in total assets. The World Bank concentrates its lending on creditworthy governments of developing nations, and splits its lending activities between the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development(IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD generally provides 12-15 year loans at slightly above market rates to countries with per capita GDPs above $1305. The IDA, meanwhile, provides interest-free 35 to 40 year loans to countries with per capita GDPs below the $1305 mark.
Unlike the IMF, which is funded by quota subscriptions from member countries, the World Bank finances its lending by borrowing on the international bond market. As a result, for the first decades of its existence the World Bank was concerned with building up its reputation as a lender and establishing its own creditworthiness. Until 1968, the Bank was a relatively small institution with less than 1000 employees concentrated in Washington that concerned itself almost exclusively with loans designed to finance transportation and energy infrastructure projects.
When JFK/LBJ Secretary of Defense and unconvicted war criminal Robert McNamara took over as president in 1968, however, he began a radical repositioning of the Bank and transformation of its aim, scope and practices. Over his 12 years at the helm of the Bank, McNamara greatly expanded its lending activities, shifting the aim of that lending toward agricultural reform and literacy initiatives, as well as the building of schools and hospitals. During this period the Bank’s treasurer, Eugene Rotberg, increased the Bank’s capital by going beyond the established developed world banks that had been its primary funding source and tapping into the global bond market. In the 1980s the bank began to press so-called “Structural Adjustment Programs” on loan recipients, including mandates to devalue currencies or reduce government spending in various areas, as pre-conditions for lending. The Bank also began providing lending to help governments service the debts they had racked up in previous rounds of lending.
After the Bank came under increasing scrutiny (and protest) in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has adjusted its policies and practices to address its critics. It now touts environmental responsibility in the infrastructure projects it provides loans for and places greater emphasis on the goal of promoting economic engagement by the poorest people in its target countries. As a result, the World Bank now claims to focus on the eradication of hunger, gender equality, environmental sustainability, maternal health and child mortality, communicable disease prevention, and universal primary education in its target countries.
The Real Story
As readers of these pages will no doubt be aware, there is of course more to the story than that glossy, PR-friendly official story would have us believe. The period of McNamara’s stewardship from 1968-1980 was instrumental in shaping the institution that we know (or should know) today: a tool of the Washington power players that is used as a way of transferring the productive wealth of the third world back to the first world. The larger capital that was raised during his tenure was used to expand the bank’s lending activities, and those expanded loans kicked off the era of the third world debt crisis, including a period from 1976 to 1980 where developing world debt rose on average 20% per year.
As journalist John Pilger noted in his powerful documentary, “War By Other Means,” released back in 1991:
“Remember Live Aid in 1985, that symbol of concern and generosity? Did you know that during that year, the hungriest countries in Africa gave twice as much money to us in the developed world as we gave to them? There was another famine last year. Perhaps you are one of those who took part in Red Nose Day. Did you know that before that day was over, the equivalent of all the money that comic relief had raised in Britain, about 12 million pounds, had come back to the rich countries? For every day this amount is given by the poorest to the rich on interest payments on loans that most of them never asked for or knew existed. In other words, contrary to a myth long popular in the West, it has been the poor of the world who have financed the rich, not the other way around.”
The process by which these loans are made and the funds distributed to their recipients has long been rife with waste, corruption and fraud. Even in the best circumstances, the types of projects that the Bank concerned itself with in its early days, infrastructure projects focusing on energy and transportation, served to primarily enrich those who were already the richest in the target countries, the friends and cronies of the corrupt rulers whose business interests could make use of such innovations. At its worst, the Bank has been used to underpin the rule of corrupt and tyrannical leaders and force entire nations into debt slavery.
This process was described most famously by former insider and self-described “economic hitman” John Perkins, who wrote his “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to shed light on the means by which the seemingly benevolent IMF/World Bank system is used to oppress and plunder the very populations it is designed to enrich.
According to Perkins:
“So how does the system work? We economic hitmen have many vehicles to make this happen, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a country-usually a developing country-that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations.
“Now most everybody in our country believes that loan is going to help poor people. It isn’t. Most of the money never goes to the country. In fact it goes to our own corporations. It goes to the Bechtels and the Halliburtons and the ones we all hear about, usually led by engineering firms, but a lot of other companies are brought in and they make fortunes off building the infrastructure projects in that country. Power plants, industrial parks, ports, those types of things. Things that don’t benefit the poor people at all; they’re not connected to the electrical grid, they don’t get the jobs in the industrial parks because they’re not educated enough. But they as a class are left holding a huge debt. The country goes deep into debt in order to make this happen, and a few of its wealthy people get very rich in the process. They own the big industries that do benefit from the ports and the highways and the industrial parks and the electricity.
“The country is left holding this huge debt that it can’t possibly repay, so at some point we economic hitmen go back in and we say, ‘You know, you can’t pay your debts. You owe us a pound of flesh, you owe us a big favor. So sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next critical United Nations vote, or send troops in support of our to some place in the world like Iraq.’ And so we use this whole process as, first of all, a means for getting their money (money we loan them) to enrich our own corporations, and then to use the debt to enslave them.”
In his book, “The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order,” Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa provides extensive documentation of precisely how this process has functioned over the years through the Structural Adjustment Loan and Sector Adjustment Loan programs at the World Bank’s disposal. This documentation includes details of the Bank’s oversight of the build-up of Rwanda’s military budget in the run-up to its bloody internal war of 1994, the Bank’s own admission of how its loan-dictated deregulation of Vietnam’s grain market led to widespread child malnutrition in the country, and the World Bank’s contribution (in conjunction with the IMF) to the unprecedented plundering of Russia that took place in the wake of the Soviet collapse.
The World Bank, despite its friendly exterior and the lofty platitudes its proponents spout in its defense, continues to undergird a system of exploitation and debt enslavement of developing countries. For half a century, the Bank has been responsible for the furtherance of a Pax Americana built not upon peace, prosperity and free trade but violence, debt and enforced servitude.
The Rest of the Story
…But now along comes the New Development Bank promising an alternative to the World Bank hegemony. Unlike the Structural Adjustment Loan regime of the World Bank, the NDB is promising to provide loans with no strings attached; the BRICS have no interest in telling loan recipients how to run their country.
Is this a fundamental challenge to the system as it exists? Is the NDB likely to live up to the lofty expectations that have been placed on it? In what time frame can we expect to see the changes to the international order take place?
The answer to these questions constitute what Paul Harvey would call in his trademark drawl, “the rest of the story…” and we will explore that story here next week.
Corbett • 09/19/2014 • 4 Comments
James Corbettcorbettreport.com
This article originally appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter on August 16, 2014. To subscribe to the newsletter and become a member of The Corbett Report website, please sign up for a monthly or annual membershiphere.
As many have heard by now, the leaders of the so-called BRICS nations – Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa – used the occasion of the 6th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, Brazil to announce the creation of the long-awaited BRICS Development Bank. Formally the “New Development Bank,” it will be based in Shanghai and capitalized with an initial $10 billion in cash ($2 billion from each of the five founding members) and $40 billion in guarantees, to be built up to a total of $100 billion.
Immediately, the press began touting the new bank as a potential rival to the current IMF / World Bank system of infrastructure development and poverty reduction in the third world. “BRICS Development Bank Could Challenge World Bank and IMF” touts US News & World Report. “BRICS Ink $50 Billion Lender in World Bank, IMF Challenge” asserts Bloomberg. The World Bank, for its part, is downplaying the rivalry, with World Bank President Jim Young Kimopenly welcoming the bank at a recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The only competition we have is with poverty,” he told reporters at the meeting.
But all of this talk about a potential rival to the IMF and World Bank have exposed the general public’s ignorance about what exactly these institutions are and what they do. While most are familiar with the IMF and its predatory lending practices (and those who aren’t are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the “IMF riot” strategy that was developed in the third world and is now being imported to Europe), the World Bank is less scrutinized and less well understood. What is it, what does it do, and why is it important for the BRICS to challenge its hegemony in the development and poverty reduction arenas?
For the answer to that, we’ll need to examine the World Bank’s history, both the official history that it touts to the outside world and the real history of its part in plundering the developing world that it is supposedly there to help.
The Official Story
The World Bank was born along with the IMF at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that decided on the financial architecture of the post-WWII world, only at that time it was known as the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development” and was concerned primarily with post-war reconstruction of Europe. After the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947, however, its focus shifted to the non-European world where it provided development loans targeted at helping developing countries create income-generating infrastructure (power plants, seaports, highways, etc.).From the very beginning there have been questions about the overlap of the IMF and World Bank’s respective roles. Both are committed, according to the IMF website, to “raising living standards in their member countries,” but the IMF is financial in nature, concentrating on short and medium-term loans to help countries meet balance of payment needs , while the World Bank is fundamentally a development institution, focusing on technical and financial support for specific projects or sectoral reforms. Part of the confusion is linguistic; at the first ever meeting meeting of the IMF the “father” of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes (who else?), confessed he thought the Fund should be called a bank and the Bank should be called a fund. Nevertheless, the monikers have stuck and the World Bank and IMF continue to talk the talk of global infrastructure development and poverty reduction.
Since the World Bank pivoted away from Europe to concentrate on the developing world in the late 1940s, it has lent more than $330 billion on infrastructure development projects. It currently boasts $232.8 billion in total subscribed capital, overseeing $358.9 billion in total assets. The World Bank concentrates its lending on creditworthy governments of developing nations, and splits its lending activities between the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development(IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD generally provides 12-15 year loans at slightly above market rates to countries with per capita GDPs above $1305. The IDA, meanwhile, provides interest-free 35 to 40 year loans to countries with per capita GDPs below the $1305 mark.
Unlike the IMF, which is funded by quota subscriptions from member countries, the World Bank finances its lending by borrowing on the international bond market. As a result, for the first decades of its existence the World Bank was concerned with building up its reputation as a lender and establishing its own creditworthiness. Until 1968, the Bank was a relatively small institution with less than 1000 employees concentrated in Washington that concerned itself almost exclusively with loans designed to finance transportation and energy infrastructure projects.
When JFK/LBJ Secretary of Defense and unconvicted war criminal Robert McNamara took over as president in 1968, however, he began a radical repositioning of the Bank and transformation of its aim, scope and practices. Over his 12 years at the helm of the Bank, McNamara greatly expanded its lending activities, shifting the aim of that lending toward agricultural reform and literacy initiatives, as well as the building of schools and hospitals. During this period the Bank’s treasurer, Eugene Rotberg, increased the Bank’s capital by going beyond the established developed world banks that had been its primary funding source and tapping into the global bond market. In the 1980s the bank began to press so-called “Structural Adjustment Programs” on loan recipients, including mandates to devalue currencies or reduce government spending in various areas, as pre-conditions for lending. The Bank also began providing lending to help governments service the debts they had racked up in previous rounds of lending.After the Bank came under increasing scrutiny (and protest) in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has adjusted its policies and practices to address its critics. It now touts environmental responsibility in the infrastructure projects it provides loans for and places greater emphasis on the goal of promoting economic engagement by the poorest people in its target countries. As a result, the World Bank now claims to focus on the eradication of hunger, gender equality, environmental sustainability, maternal health and child mortality, communicable disease prevention, and universal primary education in its target countries.
The Real Story
As readers of these pages will no doubt be aware, there is of course more to the story than that glossy, PR-friendly official story would have us believe. The period of McNamara’s stewardship from 1968-1980 was instrumental in shaping the institution that we know (or should know) today: a tool of the Washington power players that is used as a way of transferring the productive wealth of the third world back to the first world. The larger capital that was raised during his tenure was used to expand the bank’s lending activities, and those expanded loans kicked off the era of the third world debt crisis, including a period from 1976 to 1980 where developing world debt rose on average 20% per year.
As journalist John Pilger noted in his powerful documentary, “War By Other Means,” released back in 1991:
“Remember Live Aid in 1985, that symbol of concern and generosity? Did you know that during that year, the hungriest countries in Africa gave twice as much money to us in the developed world as we gave to them? There was another famine last year. Perhaps you are one of those who took part in Red Nose Day. Did you know that before that day was over, the equivalent of all the money that comic relief had raised in Britain, about 12 million pounds, had come back to the rich countries? For every day this amount is given by the poorest to the rich on interest payments on loans that most of them never asked for or knew existed. In other words, contrary to a myth long popular in the West, it has been the poor of the world who have financed the rich, not the other way around.”The process by which these loans are made and the funds distributed to their recipients has long been rife with waste, corruption and fraud. Even in the best circumstances, the types of projects that the Bank concerned itself with in its early days, infrastructure projects focusing on energy and transportation, served to primarily enrich those who were already the richest in the target countries, the friends and cronies of the corrupt rulers whose business interests could make use of such innovations. At its worst, the Bank has been used to underpin the rule of corrupt and tyrannical leaders and force entire nations into debt slavery.
This process was described most famously by former insider and self-described “economic hitman” John Perkins, who wrote his “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to shed light on the means by which the seemingly benevolent IMF/World Bank system is used to oppress and plunder the very populations it is designed to enrich.
According to Perkins:
“So how does the system work? We economic hitmen have many vehicles to make this happen, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a country-usually a developing country-that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations.
“Now most everybody in our country believes that loan is going to help poor people. It isn’t. Most of the money never goes to the country. In fact it goes to our own corporations. It goes to the Bechtels and the Halliburtons and the ones we all hear about, usually led by engineering firms, but a lot of other companies are brought in and they make fortunes off building the infrastructure projects in that country. Power plants, industrial parks, ports, those types of things. Things that don’t benefit the poor people at all; they’re not connected to the electrical grid, they don’t get the jobs in the industrial parks because they’re not educated enough. But they as a class are left holding a huge debt. The country goes deep into debt in order to make this happen, and a few of its wealthy people get very rich in the process. They own the big industries that do benefit from the ports and the highways and the industrial parks and the electricity.
“The country is left holding this huge debt that it can’t possibly repay, so at some point we economic hitmen go back in and we say, ‘You know, you can’t pay your debts. You owe us a pound of flesh, you owe us a big favor. So sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next critical United Nations vote, or send troops in support of our to some place in the world like Iraq.’ And so we use this whole process as, first of all, a means for getting their money (money we loan them) to enrich our own corporations, and then to use the debt to enslave them.”
In his book, “The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order,” Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa provides extensive documentation of precisely how this process has functioned over the years through the Structural Adjustment Loan and Sector Adjustment Loan programs at the World Bank’s disposal. This documentation includes details of the Bank’s oversight of the build-up of Rwanda’s military budget in the run-up to its bloody internal war of 1994, the Bank’s own admission of how its loan-dictated deregulation of Vietnam’s grain market led to widespread child malnutrition in the country, and the World Bank’s contribution (in conjunction with the IMF) to the unprecedented plundering of Russia that took place in the wake of the Soviet collapse.The World Bank, despite its friendly exterior and the lofty platitudes its proponents spout in its defense, continues to undergird a system of exploitation and debt enslavement of developing countries. For half a century, the Bank has been responsible for the furtherance of a Pax Americana built not upon peace, prosperity and free trade but violence, debt and enforced servitude.
The Rest of the Story
…But now along comes the New Development Bank promising an alternative to the World Bank hegemony. Unlike the Structural Adjustment Loan regime of the World Bank, the NDB is promising to provide loans with no strings attached; the BRICS have no interest in telling loan recipients how to run their country.
Is this a fundamental challenge to the system as it exists? Is the NDB likely to live up to the lofty expectations that have been placed on it? In what time frame can we expect to see the changes to the international order take place?
The answer to these questions constitute what Paul Harvey would call in his trademark drawl, “the rest of the story…” and we will explore that story here next week.
Friday, September 19, 2014
So What Does the World Bank Do Exactly?
http://www.corbettreport.com/so-what-does-the-world-bank-do-exactly/?utm
James Corbett
corbettreport.com
This article originally appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter on August 16, 2014. To subscribe to the newsletter and become a member of The Corbett Report website, please sign up for a monthly or annual membership here.
As many have heard by now, the leaders of the so-called BRICS nations – Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa – used the occasion of the 6th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, Brazil to announce the creation of the long-awaited BRICS Development Bank. Formally the “New Development Bank,” it will be based in Shanghai and capitalized with an initial $10 billion in cash ($2 billion from each of the five founding members) and $40 billion in guarantees, to be built up to a total of $100 billion.
Immediately, the press began touting the new bank as a potential rival to the current IMF / World Bank system of infrastructure development and poverty reduction in the third world. “BRICS Development Bank Could Challenge World Bank and IMF” touts US News & World Report. “BRICS Ink $50 Billion Lender in World Bank, IMF Challenge” asserts Bloomberg. The World Bank, for its part, is downplaying the rivalry, with World Bank President Jim Young Kim openly welcoming the bank at a recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The only competition we have is with poverty,” he told reporters at the meeting.
But all of this talk about a potential rival to the IMF and World Bank have exposed the general public’s ignorance about what exactly these institutions are and what they do. While most are familiar with the IMF and its predatory lending practices (and those who aren’t are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the “IMF riot” strategy that was developed in the third world and is now being imported to Europe), the World Bank is less scrutinized and less well understood. What is it, what does it do, and why is it important for the BRICS to challenge its hegemony in the development and poverty reduction arenas?
For the answer to that, we’ll need to examine the World Bank’s history, both the official history that it touts to the outside world and the real history of its part in plundering the developing world that it is supposedly there to help.
The Official Story
The World Bank was born along with the IMF at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that decided on the financial architecture of the post-WWII world, only at that time it was known as the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development” and was concerned primarily with post-war reconstruction of Europe. After the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947, however, its focus shifted to the non-European world where it provided development loans targeted at helping developing countries create income-generating infrastructure (power plants, seaports, highways, etc.).
From the very beginning there have been questions about the overlap of the IMF and World Bank’s respective roles. Both are committed, according to the IMF website, to “raising living standards in their member countries,” but the IMF is financial in nature, concentrating on short and medium-term loans to help countries meet balance of payment needs , while the World Bank is fundamentally a development institution, focusing on technical and financial support for specific projects or sectoral reforms. Part of the confusion is linguistic; at the first ever meeting meeting of the IMF the “father” of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes (who else?), confessed he thought the Fund should be called a bank and the Bank should be called a fund. Nevertheless, the monikers have stuck and the World Bank and IMF continue to talk the talk of global infrastructure development and poverty reduction.
Since the World Bank pivoted away from Europe to concentrate on the developing world in the late 1940s, it has lent more than $330 billion on infrastructure development projects. It currently boasts $232.8 billion in total subscribed capital, overseeing $358.9 billion in total assets. The World Bank concentrates its lending on creditworthy governments of developing nations, and splits its lending activities between the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD generally provides 12-15 year loans at slightly above market rates to countries with per capita GDPs above $1305. The IDA, meanwhile, provides interest-free 35 to 40 year loans to countries with per capita GDPs below the $1305 mark.
Unlike the IMF, which is funded by quota subscriptions from member countries, the World Bank finances its lending by borrowing on the international bond market. As a result, for the first decades of its existence the World Bank was concerned with building up its reputation as a lender and establishing its own creditworthiness. Until 1968, the Bank was a relatively small institution with less than 1000 employees concentrated in Washington that concerned itself almost exclusively with loans designed to finance transportation and energy infrastructure projects.
When JFK/LBJ Secretary of Defense and unconvicted war criminal Robert McNamara took over as president in 1968, however, he began a radical repositioning of the Bank and transformation of its aim, scope and practices. Over his 12 years at the helm of the Bank, McNamara greatly expanded its lending activities, shifting the aim of that lending toward agricultural reform and literacy initiatives, as well as the building of schools and hospitals. During this period the Bank’s treasurer, Eugene Rotberg, increased the Bank’s capital by going beyond the established developed world banks that had been its primary funding source and tapping into the global bond market. In the 1980s the bank began to press so-called “Structural Adjustment Programs” on loan recipients, including mandates to devalue currencies or reduce government spending in various areas, as pre-conditions for lending. The Bank also began providing lending to help governments service the debts they had racked up in previous rounds of lending.
After the Bank came under increasing scrutiny (and protest) in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has adjusted its policies and practices to address its critics. It now touts environmental responsibility in the infrastructure projects it provides loans for and places greater emphasis on the goal of promoting economic engagement by the poorest people in its target countries. As a result, the World Bank now claims to focus on the eradication of hunger, gender equality, environmental sustainability, maternal health and child mortality, communicable disease prevention, and universal primary education in its target countries.
The Real Story
As readers of these pages will no doubt be aware, there is of course more to the story than that glossy, PR-friendly official story would have us believe. The period of McNamara’s stewardship from 1968-1980 was instrumental in shaping the institution that we know (or should know) today: a tool of the Washington power players that is used as a way of transferring the productive wealth of the third world back to the first world. The larger capital that was raised during his tenure was used to expand the bank’s lending activities, and those expanded loans kicked off the era of the third world debt crisis, including a period from 1976 to 1980 where developing world debt rose on average 20% per year.
As journalist John Pilger noted in his powerful documentary, “War By Other Means,” released back in 1991:
“Remember Live Aid in 1985, that symbol of concern and generosity? Did you know that during that year, the hungriest countries in Africa gave twice as much money to us in the developed world as we gave to them? There was another famine last year. Perhaps you are one of those who took part in Red Nose Day. Did you know that before that day was over, the equivalent of all the money that comic relief had raised in Britain, about 12 million pounds, had come back to the rich countries? For every day this amount is given by the poorest to the rich on interest payments on loans that most of them never asked for or knew existed. In other words, contrary to a myth long popular in the West, it has been the poor of the world who have financed the rich, not the other way around.”
The process by which these loans are made and the funds distributed to their recipients has long been rife with waste, corruption and fraud. Even in the best circumstances, the types of projects that the Bank concerned itself with in its early days, infrastructure projects focusing on energy and transportation, served to primarily enrich those who were already the richest in the target countries, the friends and cronies of the corrupt rulers whose business interests could make use of such innovations. At its worst, the Bank has been used to underpin the rule of corrupt and tyrannical leaders and force entire nations into debt slavery.
This process was described most famously by former insider and self-described “economic hitman” John Perkins, who wrote his “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to shed light on the means by which the seemingly benevolent IMF/World Bank system is used to oppress and plunder the very populations it is designed to enrich.
According to Perkins:
“So how does the system work? We economic hitmen have many vehicles to make this happen, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a country-usually a developing country-that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations.
“Now most everybody in our country believes that loan is going to help poor people. It isn’t. Most of the money never goes to the country. In fact it goes to our own corporations. It goes to the Bechtels and the Halliburtons and the ones we all hear about, usually led by engineering firms, but a lot of other companies are brought in and they make fortunes off building the infrastructure projects in that country. Power plants, industrial parks, ports, those types of things. Things that don’t benefit the poor people at all; they’re not connected to the electrical grid, they don’t get the jobs in the industrial parks because they’re not educated enough. But they as a class are left holding a huge debt. The country goes deep into debt in order to make this happen, and a few of its wealthy people get very rich in the process. They own the big industries that do benefit from the ports and the highways and the industrial parks and the electricity.
“The country is left holding this huge debt that it can’t possibly repay, so at some point we economic hitmen go back in and we say, ‘You know, you can’t pay your debts. You owe us a pound of flesh, you owe us a big favor. So sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next critical United Nations vote, or send troops in support of our to some place in the world like Iraq.’ And so we use this whole process as, first of all, a means for getting their money (money we loan them) to enrich our own corporations, and then to use the debt to enslave them.”
http://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.pt/2013/02/confessions-of-economic-hitman-john.html
In his book, “The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order,” Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa provides extensive documentation of precisely how this process has functioned over the years through the Structural Adjustment Loan and Sector Adjustment Loan programs at the World Bank’s disposal. This documentation includes details of the Bank’s oversight of the build-up of Rwanda’s military budget in the run-up to its bloody internal war of 1994, the Bank’s own admission of how its loan-dictated deregulation of Vietnam’s grain market led to widespread child malnutrition in the country, and the World Bank’s contribution (in conjunction with the IMF) to the unprecedented plundering of Russia that took place in the wake of the Soviet collapse.
The World Bank, despite its friendly exterior and the lofty platitudes its proponents spout in its defense, continues to undergird a system of exploitation and debt enslavement of developing countries. For half a century, the Bank has been responsible for the furtherance of a Pax Americana built not upon peace, prosperity and free trade but violence, debt and enforced servitude.
The Rest of the Story
…But now along comes the New Development Bank promising an alternative to the World Bank hegemony. Unlike the Structural Adjustment Loan regime of the World Bank, the NDB is promising to provide loans with no strings attached; the BRICS have no interest in telling loan recipients how to run their country.
Is this a fundamental challenge to the system as it exists? Is the NDB likely to live up to the lofty expectations that have been placed on it? In what time frame can we expect to see the changes to the international order take place?
The answer to these questions constitute what Paul Harvey would call in his trademark drawl, “the rest of the story…” and we will explore that story here next week.
To watch John Perkins on YouTube click on following link:
http://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.pt/2013/10/john-perkins-secret-history-of-american.html
James Corbettcorbettreport.com
This article originally appeared in The Corbett Report Subscriber newsletter on August 16, 2014. To subscribe to the newsletter and become a member of The Corbett Report website, please sign up for a monthly or annual membership here.
As many have heard by now, the leaders of the so-called BRICS nations – Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa – used the occasion of the 6th BRICS Summit in Brasilia, Brazil to announce the creation of the long-awaited BRICS Development Bank. Formally the “New Development Bank,” it will be based in Shanghai and capitalized with an initial $10 billion in cash ($2 billion from each of the five founding members) and $40 billion in guarantees, to be built up to a total of $100 billion.
Immediately, the press began touting the new bank as a potential rival to the current IMF / World Bank system of infrastructure development and poverty reduction in the third world. “BRICS Development Bank Could Challenge World Bank and IMF” touts US News & World Report. “BRICS Ink $50 Billion Lender in World Bank, IMF Challenge” asserts Bloomberg. The World Bank, for its part, is downplaying the rivalry, with World Bank President Jim Young Kim openly welcoming the bank at a recent meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The only competition we have is with poverty,” he told reporters at the meeting.
But all of this talk about a potential rival to the IMF and World Bank have exposed the general public’s ignorance about what exactly these institutions are and what they do. While most are familiar with the IMF and its predatory lending practices (and those who aren’t are encouraged to acquaint themselves with the “IMF riot” strategy that was developed in the third world and is now being imported to Europe), the World Bank is less scrutinized and less well understood. What is it, what does it do, and why is it important for the BRICS to challenge its hegemony in the development and poverty reduction arenas?
For the answer to that, we’ll need to examine the World Bank’s history, both the official history that it touts to the outside world and the real history of its part in plundering the developing world that it is supposedly there to help.
The Official Story
The World Bank was born along with the IMF at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that decided on the financial architecture of the post-WWII world, only at that time it was known as the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development” and was concerned primarily with post-war reconstruction of Europe. After the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1947, however, its focus shifted to the non-European world where it provided development loans targeted at helping developing countries create income-generating infrastructure (power plants, seaports, highways, etc.).From the very beginning there have been questions about the overlap of the IMF and World Bank’s respective roles. Both are committed, according to the IMF website, to “raising living standards in their member countries,” but the IMF is financial in nature, concentrating on short and medium-term loans to help countries meet balance of payment needs , while the World Bank is fundamentally a development institution, focusing on technical and financial support for specific projects or sectoral reforms. Part of the confusion is linguistic; at the first ever meeting meeting of the IMF the “father” of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes (who else?), confessed he thought the Fund should be called a bank and the Bank should be called a fund. Nevertheless, the monikers have stuck and the World Bank and IMF continue to talk the talk of global infrastructure development and poverty reduction.
Since the World Bank pivoted away from Europe to concentrate on the developing world in the late 1940s, it has lent more than $330 billion on infrastructure development projects. It currently boasts $232.8 billion in total subscribed capital, overseeing $358.9 billion in total assets. The World Bank concentrates its lending on creditworthy governments of developing nations, and splits its lending activities between the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD generally provides 12-15 year loans at slightly above market rates to countries with per capita GDPs above $1305. The IDA, meanwhile, provides interest-free 35 to 40 year loans to countries with per capita GDPs below the $1305 mark.
Unlike the IMF, which is funded by quota subscriptions from member countries, the World Bank finances its lending by borrowing on the international bond market. As a result, for the first decades of its existence the World Bank was concerned with building up its reputation as a lender and establishing its own creditworthiness. Until 1968, the Bank was a relatively small institution with less than 1000 employees concentrated in Washington that concerned itself almost exclusively with loans designed to finance transportation and energy infrastructure projects.
When JFK/LBJ Secretary of Defense and unconvicted war criminal Robert McNamara took over as president in 1968, however, he began a radical repositioning of the Bank and transformation of its aim, scope and practices. Over his 12 years at the helm of the Bank, McNamara greatly expanded its lending activities, shifting the aim of that lending toward agricultural reform and literacy initiatives, as well as the building of schools and hospitals. During this period the Bank’s treasurer, Eugene Rotberg, increased the Bank’s capital by going beyond the established developed world banks that had been its primary funding source and tapping into the global bond market. In the 1980s the bank began to press so-called “Structural Adjustment Programs” on loan recipients, including mandates to devalue currencies or reduce government spending in various areas, as pre-conditions for lending. The Bank also began providing lending to help governments service the debts they had racked up in previous rounds of lending.After the Bank came under increasing scrutiny (and protest) in the 1990s and early 2000s, it has adjusted its policies and practices to address its critics. It now touts environmental responsibility in the infrastructure projects it provides loans for and places greater emphasis on the goal of promoting economic engagement by the poorest people in its target countries. As a result, the World Bank now claims to focus on the eradication of hunger, gender equality, environmental sustainability, maternal health and child mortality, communicable disease prevention, and universal primary education in its target countries.
The Real Story
As readers of these pages will no doubt be aware, there is of course more to the story than that glossy, PR-friendly official story would have us believe. The period of McNamara’s stewardship from 1968-1980 was instrumental in shaping the institution that we know (or should know) today: a tool of the Washington power players that is used as a way of transferring the productive wealth of the third world back to the first world. The larger capital that was raised during his tenure was used to expand the bank’s lending activities, and those expanded loans kicked off the era of the third world debt crisis, including a period from 1976 to 1980 where developing world debt rose on average 20% per year.
As journalist John Pilger noted in his powerful documentary, “War By Other Means,” released back in 1991:
“Remember Live Aid in 1985, that symbol of concern and generosity? Did you know that during that year, the hungriest countries in Africa gave twice as much money to us in the developed world as we gave to them? There was another famine last year. Perhaps you are one of those who took part in Red Nose Day. Did you know that before that day was over, the equivalent of all the money that comic relief had raised in Britain, about 12 million pounds, had come back to the rich countries? For every day this amount is given by the poorest to the rich on interest payments on loans that most of them never asked for or knew existed. In other words, contrary to a myth long popular in the West, it has been the poor of the world who have financed the rich, not the other way around.”The process by which these loans are made and the funds distributed to their recipients has long been rife with waste, corruption and fraud. Even in the best circumstances, the types of projects that the Bank concerned itself with in its early days, infrastructure projects focusing on energy and transportation, served to primarily enrich those who were already the richest in the target countries, the friends and cronies of the corrupt rulers whose business interests could make use of such innovations. At its worst, the Bank has been used to underpin the rule of corrupt and tyrannical leaders and force entire nations into debt slavery.
This process was described most famously by former insider and self-described “economic hitman” John Perkins, who wrote his “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” to shed light on the means by which the seemingly benevolent IMF/World Bank system is used to oppress and plunder the very populations it is designed to enrich.
According to Perkins:
“So how does the system work? We economic hitmen have many vehicles to make this happen, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a country-usually a developing country-that has resources our corporations covet, like oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations.
“Now most everybody in our country believes that loan is going to help poor people. It isn’t. Most of the money never goes to the country. In fact it goes to our own corporations. It goes to the Bechtels and the Halliburtons and the ones we all hear about, usually led by engineering firms, but a lot of other companies are brought in and they make fortunes off building the infrastructure projects in that country. Power plants, industrial parks, ports, those types of things. Things that don’t benefit the poor people at all; they’re not connected to the electrical grid, they don’t get the jobs in the industrial parks because they’re not educated enough. But they as a class are left holding a huge debt. The country goes deep into debt in order to make this happen, and a few of its wealthy people get very rich in the process. They own the big industries that do benefit from the ports and the highways and the industrial parks and the electricity.
“The country is left holding this huge debt that it can’t possibly repay, so at some point we economic hitmen go back in and we say, ‘You know, you can’t pay your debts. You owe us a pound of flesh, you owe us a big favor. So sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies, or vote with us on the next critical United Nations vote, or send troops in support of our to some place in the world like Iraq.’ And so we use this whole process as, first of all, a means for getting their money (money we loan them) to enrich our own corporations, and then to use the debt to enslave them.”
http://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.pt/2013/02/confessions-of-economic-hitman-john.html
In his book, “The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order,” Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa provides extensive documentation of precisely how this process has functioned over the years through the Structural Adjustment Loan and Sector Adjustment Loan programs at the World Bank’s disposal. This documentation includes details of the Bank’s oversight of the build-up of Rwanda’s military budget in the run-up to its bloody internal war of 1994, the Bank’s own admission of how its loan-dictated deregulation of Vietnam’s grain market led to widespread child malnutrition in the country, and the World Bank’s contribution (in conjunction with the IMF) to the unprecedented plundering of Russia that took place in the wake of the Soviet collapse.The World Bank, despite its friendly exterior and the lofty platitudes its proponents spout in its defense, continues to undergird a system of exploitation and debt enslavement of developing countries. For half a century, the Bank has been responsible for the furtherance of a Pax Americana built not upon peace, prosperity and free trade but violence, debt and enforced servitude.
The Rest of the Story
…But now along comes the New Development Bank promising an alternative to the World Bank hegemony. Unlike the Structural Adjustment Loan regime of the World Bank, the NDB is promising to provide loans with no strings attached; the BRICS have no interest in telling loan recipients how to run their country.
Is this a fundamental challenge to the system as it exists? Is the NDB likely to live up to the lofty expectations that have been placed on it? In what time frame can we expect to see the changes to the international order take place?
The answer to these questions constitute what Paul Harvey would call in his trademark drawl, “the rest of the story…” and we will explore that story here next week.
To watch John Perkins on YouTube click on following link:
http://fightforyourfaith.blogspot.pt/2013/10/john-perkins-secret-history-of-american.html
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Ready for landing: Mexico City airport expansion could make it one of largest in world
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy, September 3, 2014
MEXICO CITY—President Enrique Peña Nieto announced plans Tuesday to build a new airport in Mexico City that can handle four times the traffic of the existing one, the second busiest in Latin America.
The new airport will have six runways and is projected to cost $9.1 billion.
President Peña Nieto said the airport “will be the biggest infrastructure project in our country in many years and even one of the biggest in the world.”
It will be built on vacant federal land to the east of Benito Juarez International Airport, which handled about 31.5 million passengers last year.
Peña Nieto, in a 90-minute annual address to the nation, said Mexico couldn’t keep “postponing a solution” to the overcrowding at the capital airport, which regularly exceeds its operating capacity.
The bottlenecks at the airport “restrict movement around the country, limit Mexico’s ties to the world, put a brake on trade and investment, and create delays for users,” Peña Nieto said.
When engineers finished work on the existing airport in 1952, the capital had only 3 million residents. Since then, the metropolis has swollen to more than 20 million inhabitants, partially engulfing the airport, which occupies a dry lake bed.
A second terminal was added in 2007, but only two runways serve both terminals and they can’t be used simultaneously. The airport, which is Latin America’s second busiest, after Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, has surpassed the 340,000 annual takeoffs and landings experts say it’s capable of handling, hitting 389,226 last year.
That means aircraft take off and land at a pace of nearly one per minute during peak periods. The airport is less than three miles from the capital’s main square, and the standard landing approach has jetliners skimming over the city.
An annual report given by Peña Nieto’s government to Congress on Monday didn’t say how long it would take to build the new airport, which will arise on some 12,500 acres of mostly vacant land around the largely dry Lake Texcoco that’s contiguous to the current facility. [The new airport will be near the site where the Mexican government attempted to build a new airport in 2002. It failed after local farmers, wielding machetes, launched protests over the expropriation of their land for the new airport.]
Once built out to a capacity of 120 million passengers a year, the new airport could be one of the largest in the world, depending on the pace of growth at busy airports in places such as Chicago, Dubai, Beijing and Atlanta. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, handled 94.4 million passengers last year.
The Mexico City airport handles a third of air passengers in Mexico and more than half of all airfreight.
MEXICO CITY—President Enrique Peña Nieto announced plans Tuesday to build a new airport in Mexico City that can handle four times the traffic of the existing one, the second busiest in Latin America.
The new airport will have six runways and is projected to cost $9.1 billion.
President Peña Nieto said the airport “will be the biggest infrastructure project in our country in many years and even one of the biggest in the world.”
It will be built on vacant federal land to the east of Benito Juarez International Airport, which handled about 31.5 million passengers last year.
Peña Nieto, in a 90-minute annual address to the nation, said Mexico couldn’t keep “postponing a solution” to the overcrowding at the capital airport, which regularly exceeds its operating capacity.
The bottlenecks at the airport “restrict movement around the country, limit Mexico’s ties to the world, put a brake on trade and investment, and create delays for users,” Peña Nieto said.
When engineers finished work on the existing airport in 1952, the capital had only 3 million residents. Since then, the metropolis has swollen to more than 20 million inhabitants, partially engulfing the airport, which occupies a dry lake bed.
A second terminal was added in 2007, but only two runways serve both terminals and they can’t be used simultaneously. The airport, which is Latin America’s second busiest, after Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport, has surpassed the 340,000 annual takeoffs and landings experts say it’s capable of handling, hitting 389,226 last year.
That means aircraft take off and land at a pace of nearly one per minute during peak periods. The airport is less than three miles from the capital’s main square, and the standard landing approach has jetliners skimming over the city.
An annual report given by Peña Nieto’s government to Congress on Monday didn’t say how long it would take to build the new airport, which will arise on some 12,500 acres of mostly vacant land around the largely dry Lake Texcoco that’s contiguous to the current facility. [The new airport will be near the site where the Mexican government attempted to build a new airport in 2002. It failed after local farmers, wielding machetes, launched protests over the expropriation of their land for the new airport.]
Once built out to a capacity of 120 million passengers a year, the new airport could be one of the largest in the world, depending on the pace of growth at busy airports in places such as Chicago, Dubai, Beijing and Atlanta. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, handled 94.4 million passengers last year.
The Mexico City airport handles a third of air passengers in Mexico and more than half of all airfreight.
