Photo From news.xinhuanet.com The UK, France & Germany Want to Help? Really?
After World War 2 the US created a global financial infrastructure that was based on its currency, the US dollar and set up the major banks and markets of Wall Street and London to dominate international finance and the economies of nations.
At the time The US also created, along with its World War 2 allies the United Nations, whose purpose was to internationalize their Geo Political and economic agenda. Out of this came “The World Bank”. No that wasn’t a bank in which one could get a savings account or take out a home loan. The monies that went into the World Bank were confiscated from the citizens of member countries as taxes. Few of any of these citizens had any idea that their taxes were being paid to fund a “World Bank”. They didn’t even know what it was.
What it was and still is, was that after the 2nd world war most of the world, (much of it coming out of a devastating history of colonization) was under developed economically and most people were impoverished. The World Bank would “loan” money to such countries to develop. It claimed it would do this so that these countires might be able to better help themselves. Oh how kind you say?
Well sorry. The Americans, their mega banks and corporations really don’t do kind. The real nature of the World Bank was as a cats paw for Neo Colonialism. That would mean in the post war environment, re- colonizing the newly freed countries of the world as debt slaves to the mega banks and for exploitation of their resources by US- European mega corporations.
This was written in the usual tricky language as the World Bank’s goals. First of course was to reduce global poverty, (well who could oppose that?). But then it threw in its real business model. “all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment”.
Why foreign investment? Why can’t a nation develop internally as the US did in the 19th century? Hmmm. After World War 2 who had the money to make these “foreign investments”? And were these investments going to be made in the interests of the impoverished nation state, or the interests of rich foreign corporations?
As for the “facilitation of capital investments”, which banks were going to have the money to make capital investments, those of the poor countries begging for development loans, or the Mega Banks of Wall Street and London?
These are really tough questions that room fulls of Harvard trained economists, strained their politically limited capacities to think about. 65 years later they still haven’t come up with any answers.
While the world grumbled about the imperial nature of the World Bank and the IMF, (both controlled by guess what country?) for more than half a century after these institutions were created, no one could do anything about them. If you were a poor country and needed money, then you went down on your knees and only got it on the terms imposed by your past Imperial masters. If a government balked, well the US State Department working with the CIA and other shady institutions, had the capacity of funding, arming and training your internal enemies, (or importing mercenaries) to create a regime change favorable to itself.
This is the veritable machine in which Africa gets its resources stripped to the benefit of Transnational Mega Corporations and Banks.
Besides Washington using its global financial infrastructure to loot poor countries, Wall Street and London also use it to fix international prices for both commodities and capital. And because of its monopoly power over global finance and macro global economics, Washington would use all of this as weapons of war against countries whom they did not favor.
Washington’s favorite weapon was and is economic sanctions. If these sanctions only represented the policies of one nation, the United States this would not be so bad. But sanctions were used by the global institutions Washington created that functioned together as a virtual monopoly. The financial houses of Wall Street and London were used to speculate in ways so as to harm the economies of Washington’s enemies.
Finally last year the world found a hero. His name was the new president, (as of 2012) of China, Xi Jinping. Xi and the Chinese Communist Party reacted to Washington’s political and economic abuse of the global financial infrastructure that it created, by starting parallel institutions that hopefully would act honestly and not for economic and political imperial advantage.
Here is a graphic of the new global economic infrastructure that China is creating with the help of many other nations who have either been harmed by the American imperial system or simply want access to what will be the new competition. Pink rectangles represent the old US designed economic, political and military infrastructure. The Brown are the new Chinese led alternatives.
The new World Bank analogue is formally called the “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank”, (AIIB). If you are a small poor country and this bank is successful, who are you going to to ask for credit, the World Bank which wants to control your political and economic institutions, hand you over to Empire’s corporations to loot your resources and enslave your people as permanent debtors to the banks of Wall Street or London, or the new AIIB which ostensibly just wants to help you develop with minimal strings attached and at a minimal profit, only so that it can protect itself from losses and continue to function?
Washington hates all of this. Soon the World Bank will either have no clients or the institution will actually have to transform itself into being honest.
But now the worst for Washington seems to have happened. The UK joined the AIIB, Washington’s arch rival. Washington appeared to be pissed off and called Prime Minister Cameron all sorts of pejoratives, like saying that he was making a “constant accommodation” to China. That is bureaucratic speak for “x&?%@*#” and other very bad words. London held its ground and now other lap dogs of Washington have joined in. France and Germany, (they go together) are going to join the AIIB as well. And Australia and even South Korea are thinking about joining.
The supposed reason why the UK joined is that London has a lot of business on the line with Beijing and wants to encourage and grow that relationship.
But since Cameron is wholly owned by London’s banking and financial sector, he ostensibly wouldn’t have made that move if the banks hadn’t analyzed the situation and decided that the old World Bank was now effectively dead anyway. So since London financiers could no longer use it to suck the bones of the world’s poor people dry, they might as well cozy up to China as there are great profits to made in China trade as well.
But what will the role of these flunkies of Empire be in the AIIB? Will they act constructively to help poor countries break out of their cycle of poverty without trying to addict them to debts to the Wall Street- London banks? Can a tiger change its stripes?
Or perhaps all of Washington’s public theater is just that. And the Americans are more than happy to have London, Paris, Canberra, Seoul and others of its captive nations inside the AIIB, where they might function as a Trojan Horse to subvert and co- opt the new organization from the inside?
Xi is not stupid however, unlike the leaderships of most Western “leftest” parties like the Greens. He knows the ways of these Imperialists well. After all China was partitioned by them only about 125 years ago, and the Chinese have very long memories. So I expect that Beijing will structure the AIIB so that it will be very difficult for the Anglo 5 + EU Empire to play its usual games.
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