Beware of 'chief villains' IMF, WB, WTO

Solly Rakgomo | Friday November 2, 2018 15:09

They criticised protectionism that might draw countries into decline of prosperity. The IMF cuts its global economic growth forecast for the current year and for 2019.

This is pure scaremongering based on nothing. In fact, economic growth of the past they claimed of having emanated from increased trade and investments has served a small minority and driven a widening wedge between rich and poor of both developing and industrialised countries. It’s interesting how nobody ever talks about the internal distribution of GDP growth that these handlers and instruments of imperialism and liars for the elite are boasting about.  Nobody ever seems to question the way these growth rates are calculated, or perhaps just drawn out of hot air?

Just look at the insane and totally unfounded IMF prediction of 1 million percent inflation of the Venezuelan new currency in 2018 and 2019? What are they talking about? No substantiation whatsoever.  The same with the prediction of dire consequences from reduced trade, when trade as we know it, has and is  still serving almost exclusively the corporate world of rich industrialised countries, leaving poorer developing countries behind with a burden of unfair deals and often a resulting debt trap.

Such manipulations of truth coming out of international financial and trade organisations, especially the IMF and the WB, are so flagrantly and scrupulously wrong that they cannot be backed with a shred of professionalism, yet they get away with it, because of their apparent unfaultable reputation, scaremongering governments into doing what is against their peoples’ best interest, namely caring for their own local, sovereign economy, without any foreign interference.  Time and again it has been proven that those countries that need and want to recover from economic fallouts do best by concentrating on and promoting their own internal socioeconomic capacities, with as little as possible outside interference.

One of the most prominent cases pointed out by Peter Koenig is China. Koenig intellectually posits that China emerged in 1949 from centuries of western colonisation and oppression by Chairman Mao’s creation of the People’s Republic of China. 

Mao and the Chinese Communist party first had to put a devastated ‘house in order’, a country ruined by disease, lack of education, suffering from hopeless famine as a result of shameless exploitation by western colons.

In order to do that, China remained practically closed to the outside world until about the mid- 1980’s. Only then, when China had overcome the rampant diseases and famine, built a countrywide education system and became a net exporter of grains and other agricultural products.

China, by now totally self-sufficient, gradually opened its borders for international investments and trade. And look where China is today. Only 30 years later, China has become a world super power that can no longer be overrun by western imperialism. Local economy with local investments for the benefit of the local population, is, of course, not what the ultra-capitalist system that dominate policy direction at IMF and WB want because it doesn’t fit the neoliberal economic doctrine that drives globalisation forward, pushing its bitter medicine of austerity down poor governments throats, so as to further exploit their people, creating more poverty, milking their social systems and stealing their natural resources. 

The very neoliberal doctrine pushed by these imperialist entities has for the last 30 years brought more misery to 99.99% of the planet’s population than any other economic doctrine since Adam Smith.

The intention of IMF and WB is not to promote local economies, per se, but rather to get countries ready for unguarded bilateral negotiations and agreements between Washington and the developing world, under which the latter have no protection, and with their mostly corrupt leaders, they buckle under facing the harsh conditions of the empire. So, the purpose is not to help.

My point here is, to gain self-consciousness, it is vital to alert governments with the desire to return to their sovereign national politics to jump off the globalised bandwagon, the globalised trade, the open borders for indiscriminate foreign investments; it is time to sit down and reflect and return to autonomous local policies: local economies, for local markets, with local money and local public banking for the benefit of the local economy.  Trade, of course is part of a local economy; but trade should best be kept within the realm of friendly neighbours and nations that have similar interests and similar political convictions.  Trade under de-globalised circumstances should and will return equal benefits for partners, a win-win situation for all trading partners and it should be according to the original interpretation of trade.

By contrast, modern trade as we know it has almost consistently benefitted the rich countries to the detriment of the poorer ones. 

A good example for fair and equal trade may be ALBA which is an association of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, initiated and created by Venezuela and Cuba. ALBA may be an excellent illustration on how trade should work between countries or groups of countries.

Most people have never heard of ALBA, for the simple reason, the international media are typically silent about it, because the neoliberal elite don’t want a case of equality to become an example for others to follow.

Promoting fair and equal trade is not an agenda item of WTO, nor of the IMF nor the WB. Their role is just the contrary, being facilitators for the West to further exploit the people of the South and to further deplete the workers’ accumulated funds of their social safety-net that are still available in many western industrialised countries. 

It’s the bedrock of social safety that can be privatised and sucked empty by the international corporate banking system, along with privatisation of social infrastructure, such as water supply and sanitation, electricity, hospitals, airports, railways – and much more. All what has the air of profitability can and must be privatised under neoliberal economic doctrines.

Countries, nations and societies, beware of  listening and adhering to and working with these nefarious globalising organisations – IMF, WTO and WB.

They are mere servants of western corporatism and debt enslaving financial systems driven by the US Federal Reserves (FED), as well as Wall Street and their European banking partners.