By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog
‘The dependency thesis, like all good (and great) theories can be summed up in a single phrase: Modern ‘’underdevelopment’’ is not ‘’historical backwardness’’ the result of late and insufficient development; it is the product of capitalist development, which is polarizing by nature’. (Andre Gunder Frank -1996.)
The leader of the UK Conservative Party, Mrs Thatcher, first came to power in the UK in 1979 with a brief to end the post-war consensus which had prevailed from the Labour party victory in 1945. Although Labour lost the ensuing elections from 1951-1963, the Conservative Party nonetheless adopted many of Labour’s social-democratic policies, particularly the economic policies, which characterised the post-war years. The same process was to take place when Ronald Reagan established a similar ascendency in the United States. The Thatcher-Reagan duo was born and was to terminate the post-war settlement in both the UK and the US.
Theories were put forward by economic luminaries on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. The notion that there existed a magic panacea that would banish all the problems associated with the failing British and American economic policies of 1945-1979, formed the basis of the Thatcher-Reagan economic radicalism, which was to be followed by the Blair-Clinton consolidation of the 1990s. The so-called ‘supply-side’ revolution consisted of removing all the controls which undergirded capitalism, and which had been painstakingly put in place during the course of the 20th century, and simply letting the system find its own level. Privatisation, deregulation, and liberalisation were the components in this policy paradigm.
Of course none of this is news; it had been the staple of the West’s chattering classes in the late 20th century. But its effects were more than restricted to the North Atlantic bloc and was to have a global impact changing the political and economic policies and structures of the whole world.
NEO-LIBERALISM & GLOBALIZATION
In international terms ‘free’-trade as it was known was at the heart of the system – a system, which was later to become known as globalization, packaged and sold as an irresistible force of nature. Globalization was considered to be neo-liberalism writ large. But on the contrary, a more nuanced interpretation was to be put forward by one of the more astute commentators on the issue.
‘’The standard and most popular narrative is of globalization as the twin of neo-liberalism, expressing the market-fundamentalist view that state-intervention is bad for the economy. It is argued that the state interferes too much with the self-regulating power of the markets, thereby undermining prosperity. This perspective would explain why Alan Greenspan regarded it as fortunate that globalization was rendering the government as being redundant. We call this the anti-state narrative. An alternative narrative is actually considerably more germane: an anti-politics, specifically an anti-mass politics narrative. Greenspan’s statement incorporated the conventional presumption that the West has reached the frontiers of traditional politics: politics has lost its efficacy in the face of global forces. As a result, especially economic policy, is now pretty irrelevant if not actually detrimental, because everything is driven by – determined by – the impersonal force of globalisation. (1) So it is argued.
It was of course taken as axiomatic that free-trade – a vital component in the new economic paradigm – was always and everywhere the best policy. This conventional wisdom was to become known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ and was given a legitimating cachet by political, business, and academic elites around the world. However many of the elements – if not all – of the Washington Consensus where hardly new, many date back to the 18th and 19th centuries and perhaps beyond. It could be said that the newly emergent mainstream orthodoxy represented a caricature of an outdated and somewhat dubious political economy.
The free-trade canon is, of course, spoken of in almost reverential terms. It is as jealously guarded by the economics priesthood in Wall Street and the City of London and of course academia. In short, the theory is based upon a type of formal logic expounded by the early pioneers of political economy, viz., Adam Smith and David Ricardo; and in particular in Ricardo’s magnum opus, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation first published in 1817. Briefly he argued that nations should specialise in what they do best and in that way world output would be maximised. The hypothetical example he used was England and Portugal and the production of wine and cloth, where he calculated that England should produce cloth and Portugal should produce wine. It was asserted, although no evidence was ever presented, that all would gain from this international division of labour.
However, even a cursory glance at economic history, and particularly the transition from agrarian to industrial societies, demonstrates the weaknesses, and indeed serves to falsify the whole Ricardian model – taken as a model of development. The brute historical fact is that every nation which has successfully embarked upon this transition, including most importantly the US and Germany, has done so adopting catch-up policies which were the exact opposite of those advocated by the free-trade school. (2)
In the world of actually existing capitalism free-trade is the exception rather than the rule. Contemporary free-trade is mainly a matter of intra-firm trading, that is to say, global companies trading with their own subsidiaries and affiliates mainly for tax avoidance purposes, transfer pricing for example. Next come the regional trading blocs – the EU, NAFTA, (which was superseded by the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement USMCA) and Mercosur (in Latin America). With regard to Mercosur there is no common currency as is the case in most of the EU. Thirdly there is barter trade where goods and services are exchanged for other goods and services rather than money. Finally only about 20% of world trade can at most be considered free trade, and even here there are exceptions involving bilateral specifications and agreements.
INTERVENTIONISM
Modernisation and industrialisation, wherever it took place, involved tariffs, non-tariff barriers (3) infant industry protection, export subsidies, import quotas, grants for Research and Development (R&D), patents, currency manipulation, mass education and so forth – a smorgasboard of interventionist policies whereby the economy was directed from above by the state. For example, during its period of industrialisation, the United States erected tariff walls to keep out foreign (mainly British) goods with the intention of nurturing nascent US industries. US tariffs (in percentages of value) ranged from 35% to almost 50% during the period 1820-1931, and the US itself only became in any sense a free trading nation after WW2, that is once its financial and industrial hegemony had been established.
In Europe laissez-faire policies were also eschewed. In Germany in particular tariffs were lower than those in the US, but the involvement of the German state in the development of the economy was decidedly hands on. Again there was the by now standard policy of infant industry protection, and this was supplemented by an array of grants from the central government including scholarships to promising innovators, subsidies to competent entrepreneurs, and the organisation of exhibitions of new machinery and industrial processes. In addition ‘’during this period Germany pioneered modern policy, which was important in maintaining social peace – and thus promoting and encouraging social investment – in a newly unified country.’’ (4)
This path from under-development to modern industrial development, a feature of historical and dynamic economic growth and expansion which has taken place in the US, Europe, and East Asia is not a ‘natural’ progression, it was a matter of state policy. It has been the same everywhere that it has been applied. That being said the Ricardian legacy still prevails. But this legacy takes on the form of a free-floating ideology with little connexion to either practical policy prescriptions or the real world.
Turning to the real world it can be seen, by all of those who have eyes to see, that, ‘’ … history shows that symmetric free-trade between nations of approximately the same level of development, benefits both parties.’’ However, ‘’ … asymmetric trade will lead to the poor nation specialising in being poor, whilst the rich nation will specialise in being rich. To benefit from free-trade, the poor nation must rid itself of its international specialisation of being poor. For 500 years this has not happened anywhere without any market intervention.’’ (5)
GLOBAL ECONOMIC ASYMMETRY
This asymmetry in the global system is both cause and consequence of globalization. It should be borne in mind that the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are the providers of cheap raw material inputs to the industrial countries of North America, Western Europe and East Asia. In technological terms the LDC’s find themselves locked into low value-added, dead-end production where no discernible technology transfer takes place. Thus under-development is a structural characteristic of globalization, not some unfortunate accident. Put another way,
‘’ … If rich nations (the North) as the result of historical tendencies (i.e., colonialism – FL) are relatively well-endowed with vital resources of capital, entrepreneurial ability, and skilled labour, their continued specialisation in products and processes that use these resources intensively can create the necessary conditions for their further growth. By contrast LDCs (the global South) endowed with abundant supplies of cheap unskilled labour, by intentionally specialising in products which use cheap, unskilled labour … often find themselves locked into a stagnant situation which perpetuates their comparative advantage in unskilled unproductive activities. This in turn inhibits the domestic growth of needed capital, and technical skills. Static efficiency becomes dynamic inefficiency, and a cumulative process is set in motion in which trade exacerbates already unequal trading relationships, distributes benefits largely to the people who are already well off, and perpetuates the physical and human resource under-development that characterises most poor nations. (6)
Examples of these unequal economic relationships are not difficult to find. US global trade policy was openly based upon a ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ set up. America’s trade ‘partners’ were somewhat less endowed with both political and economic capital compared with their senior trading associate – this fact provides a number of typical case studies in this connexion.
Agriculture was always a particular example of the double standard inherent in the trade liberalization agenda. The United States always insisted that other countries reduce their barriers to American products and eliminate subsidies for those products which competed against theirs. However, the US kept up barriers for the goods produced by the developing countries whilst it continued to underwrite massive subsidies for their own producers.
Agricultural subsidies encouraged American farmers to produce more output, forcing down global prices for the crops that poor developing countries produce and depend upon. For example, subsidies for one crop alone, cotton, went to 25,000 mostly very well-off US farmers, exceeded in value the cotton that was produced, lowering the global price of cotton enormously. American farmers, who account for a third of global output, despite the fact that US production costs twice the international price of 42 cents per pound, gained at the expense of the 10 million African farmers in Mali, West Africa, who depended on cotton for their meagre living. Several African countries lost between 1 and 2 percent of their entire income, an amount greater than what these particular countries received in foreign aid from the US. The state of Mali received US$37 million in aid but lost US$43 million from depressed cotton prices.
In other grubby little deals the US tried to keep out Mexican tomatoes, and Mexican trucks, Chinese honey, and Ukrainian women’s coats. Whenever an American industry is threatened, the US authorities swing into action, using so-called fair-trade laws, which had been largely blessed by the Uruguay Round.
Such Treaties were little more than a con game between two grossly unequal partners where one of the partners holds all the cards. Nor does it end there. Transnational Companies can and do avoid much local taxation by shifting profits to subsidiaries in low-tax venues by artificially inflating the price which they pay for their intermediate products purchased from these same subsidiaries so as to lower their stated profits. This phenomenon is usually called ‘transfer pricing’ and is a common practice of Transnational Companies (TNCs), one over which host governments can exert little control as long as corporate tax rates differ from one country to the next.
It should also be borne in mind that although the IMF and World Bank enjoin LDCs to adopt market liberalisation policies they apparently see – or conveniently ignore – the past and current mercantilist practices of developed nations. Agriculture, as has been noted, is massively subsidised in both NAFTA and the EU. But it really is a question of don’t do what I do – do as I say.
The hypocrisy at the heart of the problem represents the elephant in the room. We know that countries which attempt to open their markets when they are not ready to do so usually pay a heavy price (Russia during the Yeltsin period and the shock therapy for example). The countries which protect their growing industries until they are ready to trade on world markets – e.g. South Korea –have been the successes, even in capitalist terms. The wave of development during the 19th century and the development of East Asia in the 20th bears witness to this.
NOT IN THE DEVELOPMENT BUSINESS
But the object of the free-trade rhetoric and finger-wagging posture of the developed world is precisely to maintain the status quo. We should be aware that … ‘’Transnational Corporations are not in the development business; their objective is to maximise their return on capital. TNCs seek out the best profit opportunities and are largely unconcerned with issues such as poverty, inequality, employment conditions, and environmental problems.’’ (7)
Given the regulatory capture of the political structures in the developed world by powerful business interests, it seems that this situation is likely to endure for the foreseeable future. Development will only come about when the LDCs take their fate into their own hands and emulate the national building strategies of East Asia.
‘’…markets have a strong tendency to reinforce the status quo. The free market dictates that countries should stick to what they are good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with the current practices in low-productivity, low-value added, and low research-intensive activities. But engagement in these activities is exactly what makes them poor in the first place. If they want to leave poverty behind, they have to defy the market and do the more difficult things that bring them higher income and development – there are no two ways about it.’’ (8)
APPENDIX
THE RUSSIAN ROAD.
The legacy of the Yeltsin years had left Russia badly exposed to a triumphalist Western US/EU/NATO bloc. The NATO expansion up to Russia’s western frontiers posed a serious threat to Russia’s security. Internationally Russia was relatively isolated. The socialist political and economic alliances (Warsaw Pact and Comecon) were disbanded, and their previous commercial and economic networks were dismantled. The Russian Federation was excluded from membership of the European Union and was not (yet) a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This was the background for the widespread popular support for the assertive policy of President Putin.
But the geopolitical situation was to say the least – challenging. For his part Putin objected to NATO’s deployment of missiles in Poland and Romania pointed directly at Russia. In 1999 the Visegrad countries, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, joined NATO and in 2004 they were joined by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. All these states joined in 2009. Albania and Croatia joined in the same year. Economically, politically and militarily, the ‘’West’’ had arrived at Russia’s borders.
In addition to its external enemies Russia had an abundance of internal foes. This latter group was a product of the Yeltsin model and prior to this a tottering bureaucratic system which barely worked and ultimately collapsed. It was possible to distinguish two main groups which, for better or worse, undermined the Soviet system, which were identified as 1. The Administrative Class, and 2. The Acquiring Class, to which should be added the black-market entrepreneurs who were keen to emulate their western business icons in addition to the American mafia. Powerful reactionary and criminal elements in Russia were keen to bring about deep-rooted changes at the expense of the Russian people.
‘’Ostensibly the reforms in Russia were overseen by a group of senior state officials headed by one Yegor Gaidar and advised, supported and encouraged by senior figures from the US administration, as well as by various American ‘experts.’ But according to an American scholar, Janine Wedel, the Russian reforms were worked out in painstaking detail by a handful of specialists from Harvard University, with close ties to the American government, and were implemented in Russia through the politically dominant ‘Chubais Clan’. (Wedel – 2001). Chubais was officially reported as having engaged foreign consultants including officers of the CIA, to fill leading roles in the State Property Committee. Jonathan Hay, citizen of the USA and Officer in the CIA, was appointed director of the Foreign Technical Aid and Expertise Section and Deputy to the chairperson of the committee (Anatoliy Chubais) within the Expert Commission. The Expert Commission was empowered to review draft decrees of the president of Russia to review for the decisions by the government and instructions by the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the State Property Committee of the Russian Federation of the details of privatisation in various sectors of the economy … The memoirs of Strove Talbott, Assistant to the US President William Jefferson Clinton on Russian affairs, left no doubt that the US administration viewed (the then) Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, as a reliable conduit for its interests in Russia.
The US neo-liberal economists Jeffrey Sachs and Andrei Shleifer, and Jonathan Hay, had an unprecedented degree of influence over Russia’s economic policy which was unparalleled for a sovereign state. Together with Gaidar and Chabais they formulated decisions that were inserted directly into Presidential decrees … Analysis shows that the implementation of Russian reforms organically combined an aspiration by Soviet bureaucrats to transform themselves from State functionaries into private property owners, and a desire on the part of the ruling elites in the West to impose their own system of values on their historical rival. It was thus inappropriate to speak of Russia and its neighbours in the CIS as having been independent in their conduct of radical economic reforms, and this very lack of independence was crucial for determining the strategy applied in these transformations.’’ (9)
Be that as it may, the damage to Russia carried out and orchestrated by both internal and external enemies was to push back Russian development at least two decades, if not more. Russia has been described by various informed opinion as being a ‘semi-peripheral economy’ and there is some truth in this, its main exports being raw materials and military and defence hardware. But this was a choice forced upon Russia by the US-western alliance. At the turn of the 19/20 century Russia needed to defend itself from western aggression. There were two absolute priorities. Agricultural security and military security. This was the sine qua non for Russia’s continued survival and development. The mixed economy – a characteristic of the western economic models, was for the moment, out of reach. But then the west started to run into its own problems, so things began to balance, particularly with the emergence of the Russian-Chinese alliance. However, the Yeltsin period which had produced a crop of cronies, co-conspirators, criminal and mafia elements, are still hidden in the shadows, often in very high places. The struggle goes on. La Lotta Continua.
NOTES
(1) Phillip Mullan – Beyond Confrontation – p.36
(2) These economic policies as advocated by Alexander Hamilton in the US. In the month of January of 1791, the Secretary of Treasury to the then President George Washington’s administration, Mr. Alexander Hamilton, proposed a seemingly innocuous excise tax on spirits distilled within the United States of America. The move was part of Hamilton’s initiative to encourage industrialization and higher degree of national sufficiency. In his December 1791 report to manufacturers, Hamilton called for protective tariffs to spur domestic production. Also, Hamilton called for the reduction of duties on goods that were carried by American ships.
This was also the case of Freidrich List in Germany in his short work – The National System of Political Economy.
(3) A non-tariff barrier (NTB) is a policy implemented by a government that acts as a cost or impediment to trade. It is not tariffs on products but rather different rules and regulations that are often the biggest practical barrier to trade between countries. Examples of non-tariff barriers include rules on labelling and safety standards on products. Other types of non-tariff barriers to trade can also be the result of policies that differentiate between national and international companies and firms. For example, domestic subsidies by governments to a carmaker may help keep that manufacturer in their country. However, that acts as essentially an indirect non-tariff barrier to other car companies looking to compete. Governments are also often likely to give preferential treatment to companies in their own country when it comes to government procurement contracts. Governments also buy products from their own industries in preference to foreign companies, these are called procurement policies another NTB. This can be seen as an impediment to free and fair international trade.
(4) Ha-Joon Chang – Kicking Away the Ladder – p.32/33.
(5) How Rich Countries Got Rich and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor. – Erik Reinert. It could be argued that political intervention would be the prerequisite for an industrial policy.
(6) Development Economics – Todaro and Smith – 2009
(7) Todaro and Smith – Development Economics – Ibid.
(8) Ha-Joon Chang – Bad Samaritans – p.210
(9) Ruslan Dzarasov – Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism – Semi-Peripheral Russia and the Ukraine Crisis – pp.82-97
Friedrich List
Not
Freidrich List
The current global economic system is a continuation of the East India Company model of global economy.
We are now heading for Opium War 3.
Who prevails will decide what happens to the world.
Assalaamu alaykum.
Both sides will probably mutually destroy each other , leaving that little state as the only remaning nuclear power in the world.
And from that position it will be easy for her to rule the world. And that is why she is doing every thing she can to provoke that war.
Thank God for the president of Russia who is making that very difficult for them.
Yes well said.
Russia and Putin is the only saving grave and equalizing force left.
what make you so sure that she would not be targeted as well?
Russia is indeed targeted. Here are Francis Lee’s words that are horrifying: “the Yeltsin period had produced a crop of cronies, co-conspirators, criminal and mafia elements… they are still hidden in the shadows, often in very high places. The struggle goes on.”
The bloody Browder and Khodorkovsky still cannot accept the stoppage to their gangsterism. Unbelievably, the traitorous Gaidar Forum (led by the US-obedient Chubais) still functions. Wikipedia: “Chubais is a Russian business oligarch who was responsible for privatization in Russia. … Chubais was born to a Russian father and Jewish mother…”
Perhaps the most impressive result of Russia’s recovery is her growing moral superiority over the morally rotten UK & US. Who is Biden? Who is Pelosi? Where is the mega-traitor Cheney? Why is Assange imprisoned?
And then there is the narcissistic Obama who single-handedly assured the restoration of slavery in the formerly prosperous Libya.
The role of military power, that is, the ability to rob a country of its wealth at gun point should not be overlooked. China and India were relatively advanced in terms of goods they produced, such as silk, tea, textiles, and so on. The British came in with gunboats and forced India to deindustrialize its textiles and forced India to import what it could make for itself.
A similar tactic–forcing opium on to the population, while ‘stealing its intellectual property’ in the form of porcelain, silk, tea, etc resulted in the country’s social and economic collapse. Likewise, African countries have been systematically decimated so as to force them to be commodity producers selling at cheap prices, while embroiling them in wars. See assassination of Lumumba and the resultant catastrophe in the Congo. And that with the Belgian genocide as a precedent!
What the West calls ‘Economics’ is in fact mass gangsterism.
Well, now that Russia has Mr. Khinzal and his Avangard sibling, and China has East Wind missiles that can take down an aircraft carrier, the winds are shifting back.
No more subsidizing of their economies with a few crumbs to pacify the plebes of the NATO alliance of colonialists. Those societies are reverting to Third World.
That’s the Dao for you. Seeking a balance.
As usual, Francis Lee is very much on point.
”The free market dictates that countries should stick to what they are good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with the current practices in low-productivity, low-value added, and low research-intensive activities.”
Ironically, the gist of this free market hogwash becomes quite ’interesting’ as we look at abysmal states today with a legacy as solid, industrial powerhouses: the US, UK, and Ukraine. They are seriously good at trashing themselves in the open, and they don’t seem to show much interest in ditching the free-market gospel. The Ukros substituted domestic Nazism for industry and is soon to run out of people. The Anglo-Americans outsourced their industry and are now coming a cropper against Russia and China; the latter ones making stunning progress in industry, science, and technology. Free-market ideology makes for top class entertainment when its manifestations amount to going backwards all along the line — voluntarily.
”The free market dictates that countries should stick to what they are good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with the current practices in low-productivity, low-value added, and low research-intensive activities.”
LOL! In short, they should stick to being poor and easily exploitable. Almost comical how easy it was to convince current and future (the US, most or all of the EU) “third world” countries to submit “because it’s good for them.”
”That being said the Ricardian legacy still prevails. But this legacy takes on the form of a free-floating ideology with little connexion to either practical policy prescriptions or the real world.”
The ideological charlatans are often nominated for the bogus ”Nobel prize” in Economics. And there is, in fact, obvious connections to practical policy prescriptions in the real world. Milton Friedman was heavily involved in Pinochet’s destruction / asset-stripping of Chile’s state enterprises, soon to be emulated in several countries around the world. I don’t know if there are any bogus Nobel laureates among the foreign swine that looted Russia back in the 1990s, but these scum were certainly taken from the very same institutions. Sweden’s Anders Åslund (abroad usually spelt ’As’, the Swedish word for carcass) is a most convincing case in point.
What is quite conspicuous about the era of neoliberalism is that while greed is good, it mustn’t be mentioned in the context of imperialist coercion which is, allegedly, 100% about tender love, care, mercy, and compassion. Touching yes, convincing nah.
Hi, Nussiminen. Prof, Sachs didn´t receive yet his Nobel prize in economics priesthood. When you see his face & his talk you surely will now suspect that this “honorable”, soft-tuned “expert” was one of the gangs of economists, actually the main intellectual perpetrator, that robbed the Soviet Union´s three generations of output in the Eltsine years of the 1990s.
I do not doubt a neoliberal “economist” such as Sachs has much in the way of blind spots, but some neoliberals are much crazier than others. Even Sachs found the IMF policies toward Russia barbaric as you can see in the quoted text below.
From 3/6: the strangulation of Russian economy in the 1990s was a deliberate IMF policy by Alex Krainer:
When Jeffrey Sachs drafted his shock therapy recommendations, he estimated that for the reforms to succeed, Soviet Union would need financial support of about $15 billion per year for many years. This money was needed for the state to continue administering essential social services like pensions, health care and food aid for the country’s population. But while the IMF and U.S. government insisted that Moscow abidingly implement the draconian shock therapy measures, they stubbornly refused to provide the needed financial aid. Sachs also advocated debt relief for the USSR which, before its collapse in 1991 was already $60 billion behind in payments to foreign creditors.
When he advised the Bolivian (1985-1986) and Polish (1989-1991) governments in implementing their own shock therapies, Sachs was able to negotiate a 50% debt write-off for Poland and a 90% write-off for Bolivia. By contrast, Russia would get no debt relief of any kind. To the contrary, at the G7 summit held in Moscow in November 1991, representatives of the seven leading western powers insisted that Soviet Union had to continue servicing its external debts at all cost, even menacing Yegor Gaidar that “any suspension of debt payments would result in the immediate suspension of urgent food aid and that the ships nearly arrived at the Black Sea ports would turn around.” [3] Moscow’s endeavor to comply with these payment obligations completely depleted the government’s treasury within only three months’ time (by February of 1992).
Sachs later reported that in December of 1991 he held discussions with the IMF urging its representatives to advance the financial support needed for Russia’s transition, but they insisted that Russia didn’t need any such assistance and told him that they had instructed the G7 accordingly. Sachs found the methodology on which the IMF had based their decision, “primitive beyond belief,” which led him to assume that the IMF was simply “parroting the political decisions already decided by the United States.” He was right, of course: as we now know, US aid policy for Russia was indeed determined by two key US government agencies: the Treasury Department run by Robert Rubin with Lawrence Summers in charge of Russian affairs, and the National Security Council.[4]
https://thenakedhedgie.com/2018/07/18/the-strangulation-of-russian-economy-in-the-1990s-was-a-deliberate-imf-policy-part-3-in-a-6-part-series/
From what I’ve heard, Pinochet was advised to privatize the nations copper mining operations and rejected it. Who in the U.S. is *not* to right of Pinochet? How about just Congress? Bernie, AOC, a few others? One having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, the others probably less than two full terms in the lower chamber.
Neoliberalism a.k.a market fascism. Where the sick and poor are blamed for their own misery. The “You-just-have-to-work-hard-enough-and-you-can-achieve-everything”-bogus kind of talk.
There is a reason why Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and other south(-east)ern European countries have a far higher life expectancy than their northern neighbours. Because they value the true joys of life and put family and health *before* work and so-called ‘productivity’. They aren’t actually that bad economies, they are just _different_ ecomonies than, lets say Germany. The neoliberal policies of Brussels have ruinied those southern countries and destroyed their wellfare system. The markets of the southern(and eastern) European countries have been flooded with western products that are produced to cheaper manufacturing prices etc.
The main error was to try to impose a mindset that is alien to them to other peoples.
Remember, Francis, the USA was from its very beginning seduced by the racist notion that Europeans were “chosen” by God to range around the planet, displacing the aboriginals and stealing their land. American journalist John O’Sullivan wrote in 1845 that it was “our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
Manifest Destiny is based on domination and exploitation just like Zionism. One is just a subset of the other. This is why the Saker calls us the AngloZionist Empire. This is why Uncle Samuel gets along so well with the Ashkenazim who are now brutally occupying Palestine. Manifest Destiny equals Zionism equals racism, pure and simple. If you don’t believe this is true, just ask any Native American or Palestinian to explain it to you.
lol, this all reminds me of a conversation I had with a Greek when I was little more than 17 years old. He first asked me if I would be willing to work for him for a penny a day doubled every day and i told him of course not. He then rebuked me saying how foolish I was for i would be a very rich man in little more than a month of work.
He then proceeded to ask me if everyone one was a millionaire who would go to work? If i owned a yacht and i need some repairs or work done on it could I go to you for this? lol I replied no I could care less about your problems fix it yourself I replied back. He just nodded something to himself and that was that?
Too many years later I come across some reading of a Dr. CM Ward who was quoted as saying that America has something like 1/3 of the worlds population and yet uses up something like 83% of the worlds resources.
Wow, really I thought at the time no wonder that before WW1 she prospered like no other nation in the world.
It looks to me like all this wealth however, has been her misfortune in some ways because when ones financial outlook has reached a gross amount that not even your great grandchildren to perhaps even forth generation are in need of nothing and have no need of employment well one ends up eating one own tail yes?
Now we come to the Chinese miracle and I’m again scratching my head because truly we don’t make anything in this country or very little and depend upon the Chinese for everything we need and have. Leaves me with a question however. When they all become wealthy and have no need of work where are they going to go to get their needs met?
Rentier economics?
Most of that material and hydrocarbon energy is simply wasted though. I think it is a safe bet that if products were not designed to break as soon as possible so they need constant fixing and replacement soon thereafter, houses were at least well insulated, airtight triple deckers with HRV/ERV, yada, yada, yada, we could have some sort of equivalent of average U.S. lifestyle with 20-25% current resource consumption quite easily.
This is crapitalism.
The media – both news and entertainment – have now politicized nearly everything in our society as an extremely powerful mechanism of control.
Most humans emotionally connect their personal belief system to the belief system of their political party, and so then any attack on their party – legitimate or otherwise – is interpreted by their brain as an attack on themselves. Reason and logic then jump out the nearest window as raw emotion takes the helm.
This is an extremely damaging and regrettable exploit of human nature. Worse, this exploit is as easy to execute as flipping a light switch for the majority of the population.
The largest PSYOP in history is unfolding right before our eyes, armed with incalculable amounts of human behavior data collected from internet and smart phone usage geared toward manipulating us to walk in lock-step into the incinerator of our own destruction.
We’re dealing with a captured media and the transparently obvious military grade psychological operations they are relentlessly employing, the millions of sheep that believe their every obvious lie and preach it as gospel, and their near total obliviousness to the self-evident fact that this plandemic is a blatant takeover of the world by a handful of psychopaths.
Here are two essential articles detailing how politicians hack our brains with fear as a means of political control:
http://libertymcg.com/2013/07/23/this-is-your-brain-on-terrorism/
https://www.serendipity.li/agamben-biosecurity-and-politics.htm
If you found this information useful, please share it with this link:
http://tritorch.com/folly
Parabéns pela sua percepção!
O Brasil ´certamente é hoje o cenário mais representativo dessa estratégia.
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Google-translate from Mod:-
Congratulations on your perception!
Brazil is today today the most representative scenario of this strategy.
Me. Lee, thank you for an absolutely fantastic article!
On a related note, speaking of “free” trade, here is a very short, IMO very revealing article that was recently published on the TASS online english website as that day’s lead article:
https://tass.com/economy/1321313
The article speaks for itself, but as I read it I wondered what currency the presumably Russian company or companies that exported those 26.17 million barrels of the oil to the US in May, 2021 (an average over 844,000 barrels per day for each of May’s 31 days!) accepted as payment — was it evil USD that the US “treasury” printed out of thin air, backed by nothing but men with guns and drones, or was it rubles, Euros, or even bars of gold? (I’ll bet my bottom dollar that it wasn’t the latter, but one can only hope. Pop quiz time: if the US had to pay for 844,000 barrels per day of Russian oil with bars of gold, how may days would it take to drain the US of all the gold in its depositories?)
Regardless, upon further investigation of Russia’s petroleum exports to the US, I found the following statistics at the US Energy Information Administration:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php
The US imported 7.86 million barrels of “petroleum” PER DAY and Russia’s percentage of those imports in 2020 was “7%”. Therefore, in 2020 Russia exported to the US an average of 550,200 barrels per day for each and every day of 2020, which I found to be pretty eye-opening. That’s a total of 200.8 million barrels of Russian petroleum exported to the US during 2020.
To what extent can Russia and the US be REAL enemies if Russian companies are selling this much petroleum to the US on an ongoing basis? Do these ongoing sales affect Russian foreign policy in any way?
Russia…Russia…Russia
Russia must achieve much stronger economic growth. Without that, Russia will die in stagnation
West …they know what they are doing. They are not stupid. They slowly strangle Russia.
Last 8 years average russian economic growth is 0.5%.
It is awful stagnation and indicator that something was wrong.
I hope that Mishustin government will make russian economy to gain momentum.
Putin and company have to eliminate remaining oligarchs because they are cancer of Russia
Russia should have growth of GDP 5% annually. Russia have huge potential for even stronger growth.
Why they cannot make growth I do not know. Sanctions are one reason but not fatal. Russia can do much and much better.
If not, they will face color revolution sooner or later.
And my message to Russians
Please…please stop complaining about Ukraine and Ukrainians.
They chose their path and their way.
Take Novorussia back and say good bye to the rest of Ukraine.
Ricardo, in the 19th. century, after the defeat of Napoleon, with the rise of the Jewish banking hegemony centered in the City of London, laid down the textbook of Banker´s Economics which was in tune with the incipient British Empire´s aristocrats. Friedman, in the 20th. century, after Nixon´s exit from the gold standard, resumed Ricardo´s “theory” of free-market by decorating it with a “monetarist” façade in order to let the Jewish fiat money printers of the whole West grab a good chunk of the production in the face of the planet.
You get economics and you get politics. Kissinger was honest “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries”
Of course, Kissinger might have well said “Preventing development and industrialization should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of resources from abroad, especially from less developed countries”.
So it was ordained that the Third World must not develop, and so things could have continued …
But alas, there are other priorities, and I know I sound like a broken record repeating the same thing – but for the New World Order to arise, the Old World Order has got to go. So the West has got to go. Blah! Blah! Blah! etc. And the method chosen to get the West to go was the old Communist strategy from the 1920’s of driving the workers hard to produce commodities cheaper and dumping these commodities on the West to the devastation of Western industry and its workers. The increase in unemployment in the USA would then lead to the USA falling to Communism.
And so the world finds itself in the situation it is in today.
The Thatcher-Reaganism you cite of supply side monetarism was merely a bankers gimmick to turnoff the 1970s inflation they artificially created and grab power, particularly in the UK.
Thatcher instituted opposite policies to Reagan – she tightened spending and sold off Govt assets – while Reagan spent like a drunken sailor.
When the bankers initial agenda of sells-offs ended, their puppet Thatcher abandoned the monetarism – said it didnt work – proving the whole thing was a scam. And by that time in 1989 she was in deep trouble herself politically (being hopeless PM from the start) and got removed for an equally inept John Major. 1979-1995 was wasted period for Britain where a lot of damage was done (the prev LP Govt wasnt much better) as was 1995 -2011.
The Blair-Clinton period marked a era of leftist corruption – both peddled the notion they were politicians of the left when they were corrupt – con men – in the pockets of the globalist swine responsible for the current mess. Like Thatcher, he had to go before his is party lost an election. Scotland Yard need to invesyigate the death of the former Labor Leader who conveniently died when Blair was trying to take over the leadership.
History writers will in the end not be kind to Thatcher and Blair, let alone the current clown Johnson.
There was always interventionism for the the interests of the backers – in the US the MIC and others got the corporate welfare – massive spending they say Govt should not give. Same in UK to select industries and financiers. A hypocracy. And a racket.
There was no free trade ever put in. Nor free markets.
It was a rigged system – as the author notes of north-south – the predators and the prey.
A system designed to maximize profits and control for the few.
Hence we have the current mess.
Trickery is always involved…………
Going back further one can only wonder if for example, the UK’s abolition of slavery in 1833 was a part of a strategy to recover the American colonies by dividing the slave owning south from the north. The anti-slavery movement conveniently began in 1783 – the very year the American War of Independence ended that had began 1776. That will be a UK bankers trick and agenda they got the UK Govt to implement, Then what did the UK do in 1863 ? – they sided with the south – when at the same time UK bankers tried to fund the north to run it into debt but Lincoln didnt fall for the trap and printed his own greenbacks. And example of bankers-geopolitics. Similar to what was done to Russia in WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
Russia can learn from all this to ensure its doesnt allow both internal and external business and banking monopolies to do the same to it over the next century. And that includes from China.
Globalists talk free trade and open markets but they don’t apply the same rules to themselves.
If the third world cut off supplies of commodities to the north and forced up prices – then it would force a change to the current uneven paradigm.
The current situation is this artificially created pandemic (Fauci/CDC/Gates) is being used to run most countries into debt and permanently damage the populations, economies and govts of the world – particularly the second and third world. A means to deal with this could be to nationalize foreign assets in them as compensation.
No need to wonder Santiago, you have hit the nail squarely on it’s head. They were pissed off ever since the Russians and French blocked the harbours and denied England entry into the US.
‘Going back further one can only wonder if for example, the UK’s abolition of slavery in 1833 was a part of a strategy to recover the American colonies by dividing the slave owning south from the north. The anti-slavery movement conveniently began in 1783 – the very year the American War of Independence ended.’
More people need to read and understand what you wrote……….the English play the long game……little Archie is part of that long game plan. Fifty, forty, thirty years from now when nominations are being presented another malato will sweep the imaginations of the country and the Brits will have a true Royal ruling over the US, no need for a CIA/MI6 plant. Who needs Nastradamus when they do it right under your nose, then rub it in.
Cheers, M
Nature is an expansion in earth planet. Human beings live dependent upon Nature. The Universes known & unknown are also very real. Repeatedly ignoring Nature rules is the corruption. US Presidents & other parts of Earth that also have “Leaders”, mostly, since the beginning of time, are not an enlightenent. E.g., Israel Chosenites think & act as though the current time is, not a monkey w/ dynomite in a powder keg. The Balfour Decision [Rothschilds of England, et al] “Ruthless Empire Builders”… coveting Palestine is ground zero (Syria, IRAN, Et Al) won’t use nukes, please! This thumbnail sketch may be the same as 9-1-1, w/ cosmic reality enema game over big bang. In a word, Prayer & in 2 words, without ceasing!