This is a fascinating account of how corperatocracy achieves its pervasiveness. How imperialism, masqueraded as neoliberalism, is thrust upon resource-rich countries via unserviceable loans. Gone are the days when you grab the resources with military might. That was old method - expensive, messy and negative publicity. Changed times calls for changed techniques. New method is more subtle, less expensive, faster and long lasting. With the new method,you need lots of brains and a few people - well trained corporate commandos called EHMs - Economic Hit Men.
The way this is achieved is really simple. They (U.S Government - in the form of World Bank, IMF) identify one country with a particular resource - lets say oil. They send out their EHMs to do the legwork. They come in, do their research and collect data. In this process, they also identify and condition willing traitors, opinion drivers, power brokers and other key players within the bureaucracy or dictatorship - as the case may be. Those who do not fall for money is coerced through other means - say sex or even veiled or blatant threats.
The next stage is identifying a project which directly or indirectly or even unrelated to the resource they want to grab. The objective here is to force you to accept a huge loan which they know you can't service. But you can not force somebody to accept a loan, can you? Here comes their research reports, projections and other enticing numbers. This is to convince you that your economic growth and the resulting rise in GDP and per capita income would give you more than enough money in taxes and other revenues to service the debt easily. Often these projections are made for a period of 25 to 50 years. Long term benefits. Was it not John Maynard Keynes, the founder of keynesian theory who said "In the long term, we're all dead."?
How ironical, isn't it?
For some of you who are not familiar with economics, let me explain this irony.
Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle. This is from wikipedia.
Got the irony part now?
Okay. Let's go to the next stage now.
You are convinced now. Like you were not in the first place. When I say convinced, I mean that you are now convinced that you have something with which you can convince the people. The locals. The less fortunate. The real owners of those resources.
Come on, do you think that this is a big job?
If you can't, help doesn't end there. You can use our vast network of trumpets. Boardroom Bulletins - as Arundhati Roy puts it.
Okay. You have now agreed in principle. Lets go to the next stage - the specifics. The part they like. This is where the meat is.
The project - be it a construction of a dam, railway, roads or anything - needs to be done by competent people - not your homegrown, third rate companies. Competent here would mean a handful of companies. Bechtel, Halliburton and the like.
Do a research on them please. On IMF, World Bank and the competent companies, I mean.
You will find these outfits are as international as your granddad's grocery shop.
U.S Hold veto power. They are also the biggest single shareholder. The poorest of the poor 150+ countries together hold less than 30%. Got the picture?
Calculations by U.S treasury shows that for every U.S.$1 the United States contributes to international development banks, U.S. exporters win more than U.S.$2 in bank-financed procurement contracts. International, my foot!
Dominated by neoclassical economists, these outfits are systematically looting poor countries out of their valuable resources in two ways - One - repayment of loans (I mean interests, not the principal) - Two - by bringing valuable resources like oil, minerals, metals or even water (remember Bolivia) into the whole equation.
I am being carried away. Lets finish what we started.
These projects are often highly capital intensive and require technical know-how which is in the possession of only a few. A common feature of all these projects is that it often involves technical updations and require long term maintenance contracts, stretching to the project's economic life. That would mean highly lucrative maintenance contracts.
Do you know that IMF or World Bank have never disapproved a loan? All these projects have never been aimed at alleviating poverty, eradicating hunger. It had always been a recycling mechanism - a way to indebt poor countries and re-cycle the money back to big corporations. The pound of flesh had always been the same - right to exploit natural resources, formulation of pro-imperialistic policies and the like .
In an Indian context, whenever a voice is heard against this form of imperialism, you are labelled anti-development.
This was not meant to be a book review. But you must read this book. And its sequel too - "The Secret history of American Empire" - by the same author.
