Countries, nations and societies, should be wary of listening and adhering to, and working with, these nefarious globalizing organizations – 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, writes PETER KOENIG.

Economic growth of the past that 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 industrialized countries. It’s interesting, how nobody ever talks about the internal distribution of GDP growth that these handlers and instruments of empire 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?

Take the case of Peru, a resource-rich country that boasted in the past often an economic growth of 5% to 7%. On average, the distribution of this growth was such that 80% went to 5% of the population and 20% was to be distributed among 95% of the people. This doesn’t even address the fragmentation of the lower and higher tiers of the percentage breakdowns, but it surely creates more poverty, more inequality, more unemployment and more delinquency.

Or just look at the insane and totally unfounded IMF prediction of one 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 serving almost exclusively the corporate world of rich industrialized 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 organizations, 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 unfailable reputation, scaremongering government into doing what is against their and their peoples’ best interest, namely caring for their own local, sovereign economy, without any foreign interference.

Time and again it has been proven that countries which 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 in point is China.

After China emerged on 1st October 1949 from centuries of western colonization and oppression by Chairman Mao’s creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), 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 not only become the world’s number one economy, but also a world superpower 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 wants. It doesn’t fit the neoliberal economic doctrine – driving globalization forward, pushing its bitter medicine of austerity down poor governments throats, so to further exploit their people, creating more poverty, milking their social systems and steeling their natural resources.

The point is – for self-conscious and alert governments with the desire to return to their sovereign national politics – this is a crucial moment of truth to take advantage of. The ship is turning. It is the moment to jump off the globalized bandwagon, the globalized 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, ofcourse is part of a local economy; but trade should best be kept within the realm of friendly neighbors and nations that have similar interests and similar political convictions. Trade under de-globalized circumstances should and will return equal benefits for partners, a win-win situation for all trading partners – as 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 (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de NuestraAmérica) – an association of eleven Latin American and Caribbean countries (Antigua and Barbuda Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Surinam, the Grenadines and Venezuela), 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 doesn’t want a case of equality to become an example for others to follow. There exist currently other similar, even lesser known cases of fair and equal trade, throughout the world, that are equally silenced by the media.

Promoting fair and equal trade is not an agenda item of WTO, nor of the IMF or the World Bank. 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 industrialized countries, especially in the western EU.

It is the bedrock of social safety that can be privatized and sucked empty by the international corporate banking system, along with privatization 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 privatized under neoliberal economic doctrines.

Countries, nations and societies, beware from listening and adhering to, and working with, these nefarious globalizing organizations – 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.

[Courtesy: Global Research, October 14, 2018; https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/mail/inbox/rp; Abridged by YMD]

---

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; Information Clearing House; Russian TV; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).