RORY MCGOVERN
<Staff Writer>
“You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and feed him for the rest of his life.” In the context of modern international economics, this truism would, more often than not, reflect a development agenda which would be better captured thus: “you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, as long as the fish you give is either a) collateralized with significant public assets in the target nation or b) can generate a criminal return on investment for the fish giver via interest payments. As far as teaching people to fish, why would anyone want to do that?”
For decades, Western governments (most notably our greedy, war-mongering neighbours to the south) have engaged in an economic war against the rest of the world. The main weapon that has been used is ironically called “development assistance.” The weapon is deployed in three stages:
- A bunch of half-wit economists who think there are free-standing necessary laws rather than system-generated contingent “laws of economic growth” generate economic predictions for developing nations which justify outrageous loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at crazy interest rates (see John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman).
- In turn, American companies (who supply or conspire with the half-wit economists) get huge infrastructure contracts for roads, power lines, servers, and hydro-electric dams. As a result, most of the “development assistance” is exported back to the United States or other Western governments in the form of construction and consulting contracts.
- The “developing nation” is turned into a debt slave and told to feel “grateful that the United States brought them out of the Stone Age.” The target is then forced to service their debt and pay off the companies that secured the construction contracts (eg. Halliburton et al). This leaves little money for health care, education, and, most importantly, funding research and development at universities. The nation appears to have developed, but there is almost no economy other than a service industry. Major resources are controlled by foreign-owned corporations. In addition, manufacturing Western-designed products at unconscionably cheap prices becomes the icon of an economic miracle.
As Perkins observes, these systems of economic control provide one main advantage to Western nations – it creates a nefarious kind of political leverage due to the dependent economic relationship. This leverage is used for, among other things, securing votes at the UN, securing support for idiotic wars (remember the pathetic “coalition of the willing” in the Iraq war?) and ensuring that no real economy develops in the target nation.
I submit that there are two additional long term disadvantages to this kind of activity which we are clearly observing now. The first disadvantage is the emergence of anti-American/anti-Western trading blocs. Not every nation is run by complete morons. Intelligent and un-corruptible leaders figure out the debt slave game and in turn refuse to do business with the United States or Western nations. They then form their own trading blocs which will one day compete with Western trading blocs (see, for example, the BRIC countries).
The second disadvantage is that these economic policies have brought about the early stages of a currency war. As the commerce within the trading bloc develops, the members start using different currencies which then run parallel to Western currencies like the dollar and the euro. As a result, Reals, Rubles, and Yuan (Renminbi) have started to become the preferred means of exchange for BRIC countries.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, scarcity will become a phenomenon which will require a global coordination of resources. A global coordination of resources will require a global coordination of currencies for settlements of transactions involving resources. If you were Russia, India, Brazil, or China your first move is to destroy the petrodollar so that you are not beholden to the monetary policy of the competing trading bloc. What happens after that?
The part which is left out of the fisherman story is this: One day, after receiving a fish laced with arsenic and toxins, a poor farmer and all of his friends decide to destroy the fisherman who poisoned their community. The fisherman, supreme in his arrogance, sits idle on the dock upon which he started his nefarious enterprise. Suddenly he realizes that the dock on which he is sitting is floating out in the middle of a lake. He is alone, hungry and his fat American ass is starting to destroy the structural integrity of the dock.