-Caveat Lector- Post Number 90: Brazil; Why most of the world hates the UNITED STATES When you look at what is going on in Serbia, please take this story into account. It is not hard to understand why the rest of the world hates the UNITED STATES. They have simply transferred the hate previously held for the British Empire to the UNITED STATES. If you do not understand why this is so, please read my series. God Bless, David How the US seized power in Brazil Voters chose President Cardoso - but American scheming gave them Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin instead By Gregory Palast Sunday March 7, 1999 When the United States Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was little, he dreamed of becoming President - of Brazil. Now his dream has come true. Of course, as an American living in Washington, Rubin won control the only way he could - through a brilliant swindle. The nominal President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was re-elected last October for only one reason: he had apparently stabilised the country's currency - and thereby stopped inflation. In truth, he hadn't. Brazil's real was ludicrously overvalued. Yet as the election approached, its exchange rate against the dollar defied gravity. This miracle carried Cardoso to victory, with 54 per cent of the vote. But miracles don't really happen. Fifteen days after Cardoso's inauguration, the real keeled over and died. Today, it trades at roughly half its election-day value. Inflation is zooming, and the economy is imploding. Support for Cardoso, now reviled as an incompetent cheat, has dropped to 23 per cent of the electorate. Too late. He's President. Well, more or less. There is nothing much left to Cardoso's presidency but the title. All meaningful policies, from spending to employment, are dictated by the International Monetary Fund and its brethren agencies. And behind them, calling the shots, is Treasury Secretary Rubin, who rules as de facto president of Brazil without having to miss a single US cocktail party. This is the price Cardoso pays for Rubin's election campaign services. For it was the US Treasury which, with the IMF, kept Brazil's currency aloft. Rubin had good reason, besides helping Cardoso, for maintaining Brazil's dubious coinage. Knowing that the currency would go to pieces after the election, the US Treasury made sure American banks could get their money out of the country on favourable terms. Between last July and the inauguration this January, Brazil's dollar reserves dropped from $70 billion to $26bn, a sign the bankers had grabbed their money and run. Yet the currency stayed afloat before the election because the US said it would replace lost reserves with an IMF loan package. And it was made equally clear to voters that the funds would be handed over only to Cardoso, not to the opposition Workers' Party. The international elite's sponsorship of Cardoso was sealed by the appearance in Rio de Janeiro last July of Peter Mandelson, whose unusual endorsement of Cardoso marked the Brazilian's official enrolment in the Clinton-Blair 'third way' project and caused a stir in the Brazilian press. A month after Cardoso's re-election, the IMF duly offered credits totalling $41bn. Brazil will net none of it, of course. Any portion that actually drips towards the nation takes the next plane out with investors and speculators abandoning the country. Brazilians are left to pay off this debt. But that's the least of their worries. As part of the black magic of maintaining the pre-election exchange rate, Washington pushed the Bank of Brazil to raise its benchmark rates, which have now settled at 39 per cent. The IMF wanted 70 per cent. On the streets of Sao Paulo, this translates into interest rates of up to 200 per cent on private loans and business credit. Confirmation of Rubin's scheme to bail out both Cardoso and the US banks comes from a most interesting source: Harvard University's Jeffrey Sachs. Sachs is best remembered as the Typhoid Mary of neo-liberalism, who spread free-market theorems and economic depression across the former Soviet Union. Sachs, who is still in the chattering loop of players in the international finance game, told me: 'You could watch (Brazil's) economy going over a cliff. It happened in slow motion. But rather than prevent collapse though controlled devaluation, Washington and the IMF vigorously encouraged 50 per cent-plus interest rates. 'Washington wanted Cardoso re-elected,' he said, and American financiers needed six months to unload Brazilian bonds and currency on favourable terms. If Rubin's financial coup d'etat seems well practiced, this is because he used the same method in 1994 to become de facto President of Mexico. Once again, a mistrusted ruling party was returned to power on the strength of its currency and US promises of support. Four weeks after President Ernesto Zedillo's inauguration, the peso collapsed while American lenders to Mexico were bailed out by a special US loan fund. Cardoso knows better than to blame Rubin's manipulations for Brazil's troubles. Rather, with help from a right-wing press, he and the IMF blame the economic collapse on villains familiar to British readers: government employees, pensioners and unions. They are accused of busting the government's budget. That's nuts. Interest payments, notes Sachs, equal a monstrous 10 per cent of the nation's spending, and entirely account for the doubling of the federal deficit. Compared with this, government workers' pensions, chief target of the budget cutters, are a drop in the ocean. But Sachs' analysis falls short. He says the IMF 'failed', because the high interest led to crisis and depression. He's wrong. Crisis is part of the plan. Only in an economic panic can Rubin and the IMF unleash the Four Horsemen of Reform: kill social spending, cut government payrolls, break the unions and, the real prize, privatise lucrative public assets. Yet Cardoso is not Rubin's happy hand puppet. Formerly a sociologist and expert on dependency theory, he must grieve for the loss of Brazil's financial sovereignty. He survived the elections, but the opposition swept his party from the biggest states. The new regional governors aren't grieving. They are baring their teeth. In January, Brazil's former President, Itamar Franco, just elected Governor of Minas Gerais state, refused payment on debts to the federal Treasury. Six other governors then told Cardoso what any sensible person would tell a loan shark who raises interest rates from 10 per cent to 60 per cent: go to hell. The press dismisses Franco as a buffoon, jealous of Cardoso. Their purpose is to take the attention away from the true threat to Cardoso and the IMF, Olivio Dutra, the popular Governor of Southern Rio Grande state and rising star of the Workers' Party. The son of landless peasants, this youthful, suave militant for the TV age turned the state's capital into a national showcase of development. It is Franco they attack, but Dutra they fear. Cardoso is doing his best to punish the citizens of Rio Grande state for electing Dutra, who did not withhold payments to the federal government but paid the funds, about #27 million, into the courts. Cardoso responded viciously, holding back #37m in taxes collected for Dutra's state. The IMF blocked loans to Rio Grande. Reached by telephone at his office in Porto Alegre, Dutra said he accepted that crisis requires sacrifice. He has laid off state workers. But he had the audacity to suggest that General Motors and Ford join the sacrifice and give up the tax breaks now bleeding the state treasury. Brazil is a rich nation. Its gross domestic product, even in depression, is a third of a trillion pounds. But like a frantic hamster on a toy wheel, it is losing the race to capture its own fleeing capital, which it must buy back at usurious interest rates. This is why Dutra is especially agitated over the seizure for privatisation if his state's development bank, an engine of Rio Grande's self-financed expansion. The Governor, no fool, does not waste bullets on the humiliated Cardoso. By organising resistance to Rubin's demands and the IMF's loan terms, Dutra shrewdly aims not at the puppet but the puppeteers. As more and more people begin to starve to death around the world, because of actions directly related to Washington, DC, perhaps more Americans will begin to understand why judgement will come against them. I urge you to pass this post on to others, as they may need to understand what is going on. We all have a moral obligation to help understanding and knowledge spread across America. "But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood." Ezekiel 33:6 (NIV) <p> The cost of liberty is eternal vigilance <p> I am now selling copies of the book �Strategic Withdrawal; the Peaceful Solutions Manual.� If you would like a copy of the paper �Strategic Withdrawal in a Nutshell,� please E-mail me and request it at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In addition, various people around the country are arranging Seminars for the author of this book. If you are interested in seeing a schedule of upcoming events, please let me know and I will supply the information. <p> Is information in this post for real? I assure you it is. If you do not understand, I suggest you begin reading the papers that I have prepared for people just like you (no cost; no obligation). There are currently 18 papers in all and they cover health, cancer, nutrition, the Constitution, citizenship, law, case law, nature, and many other subjects. Currently, there are at least 5 doctors, 2 lawyers, 1 judge (that I know of), 3 college/university professors and many others reading the information. They read because they are learning; maybe you should as well. Your first paper will be about United States citizenship, and what case law says about it. Case law from the Supreme Court, for instance. The second paper is on the Constitution. <p> To understand the world around you it is necessary to understand Scripture, and one piece of information from Scripture is particularly telling; �the LOVE of money is the root of ALL evil.� Not some evil; not most evil; ALL evil. Private courts the IRS uses are simply another way to prey on the uninformed; please, do not stay uninformed. Learn what is really going on in America. Learn why the United States government (a corporation [in bankruptcy]) allows abuse of people like the fraudulent IRS. I will be sending other Posts I consider important; please pass them on to those you consider in need of information. Please watch for them. David <p> If you are interested, please E-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and let�s get started! And for those of you who have been reading and stopped for some reason, any reason, please continue. Believe me, the real information begins after Part X! There will be a total of 20 parts, and those who are finishing are learning much more, and this learning is changing how they look at the world around them, in some ways, drastically. God Bless, David <p> "Most people, sometime in their lives, stumble across truth. Most jump up, brush themselves off, and hurry on about their business as if nothing had happened." - Sir Winston Churchill <p> When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest. <p> Lawyers: 99.9 percent of them give the rest of the profession a bad name. <p> I don't think you can make a lawyer honest by an act of legislation. You've got to work on his conscience. And his lack of conscience is what makes him a lawyer -- Will Rogers (1879-1935) It can be said better: When do you know a lawyer is lying? When his mouth is open. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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