Below are a few quotes from the Book: "The
Globalisation of Poverty" by Michel Chossudovsky; Australian Publisher,
Pluto Press; Australian ISBN 1 85649 402 0
"...commercial banking and business
ownership (controlled by some 750 global corporations)..."
"The movement of the global economy is
'regulated' by 'a worldwide process of debt collection'"
"This is not however a 'free' market
system:"
"What is at stake is the ability of this
international bureaucracy to supervise national economies through the deliberate
manipulation of market forces."
"At each phase of this crisis, the movement
is towards global overproduction and the decline of consumer
demand."
"The global economic system is thus
characterised by two contradictory forces: the consolidation of a cheap-labour
economy on the one hand and the search for new customer markets on the
other."
"The debts of parastatal enterprises,
public utilities, state, provincial and municipal governments are carefully
categorised and 'rated' by financial markets (e.g. Moodys and Standard and Poor
ratings)."
"In the US, the controversial 'balanced
budget amendment' demanded by Wall Street (which was narrowly defeated in the
Senate) in 1995 would have entrenched the rights of the states creditors in the
US Constitution."
"In turn, the accumulation of large public
debts in Western countries has provided financial and banking interests with
'political leverage' as well as the power to dictate government economic and
social policy."
"Small enterprises are either eradicated or
impounded as so-called 'franchisees' into the net of a global
distributor."
"'Free trade' and economic integration
provide greater mobility to the global enterprise while at the same time
suppressing (through non-tariff and institutional barriers) the movement of
small local-level capital."
"The peripheral stock markets have thereby
become a new means of extracting surplus from developing
countries."
"The daily turnover of foreign exchange
transactions is of the order of $1 trillion a day of which only 15% corresponds
to commodity trade and capital flows."
'Favoured by the structural adjustment program
and the concurrent deregulation of the financial system, the criminal mafias
have expanded their role in the spheres of international banking. In several
developing countries, national governments are under the trusteeship of such
criminal factions."
"The plunge of the US dollar is also a
consequence of the large share of the US public debt held by German and Japanese
financial institutions,..."
"The depreciation of the American dollar
while not formally acknowledged as 'default on sovereign debt', nonetheless
denotes a de facto contraction in the real value of US public debt transacted on
international capital markets."
"Private debts were conveniently recycled and transformed
into public debts."
"...Mexican banks will be thrown open to foreign
ownership and the countries entire oil export earnings will be deposited into a
bank account in New York managed by its international creditors." [Ditto
Western Australia at this time (see: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~austand/oznews.htm
)]
"The IMF intimated in this regard that other indebted
countries could meet the same fate as Mexico: 'we will therefore introduce still
stronger surveillance to be sure that the convalescence goes
well...'."
"Since the early 1980s, large amounts of debt of large
corporations and commercial banks in the developed countries were erased and
transformed into public debt. Similarly, multilateral and bilateral loans to
developing countries were granted to enable countries to reimburse the
commercial banks, - i.e. commercial debt was conveniently transformed into
official debt (bilateral and multilateral) thereby reducing the 'exposure' of
the commercial banks.
This process of 'debt conversion' is a
central feature of the crisis: business and bank losses including non-performing
loans have been systematically transferred to the state."
"...the burden of corporate losses was shifted to the
state through the acquisition of bankrupt enterprises. The latter could then be
closed down and written off as tax losses."
"While corporate taxes were curtailed, the new tax
revenues appropriated from the (lower - and middle -) salaried population
(including the value-added taxes) were recycled towards the servicing of the
public debt. While the state was collecting taxes from its citizens, 'a tribute'
was being paid by the state (in the form of hand-outs and subsidies) to big
business."
"An absurd situation: the state was 'financing its own
indebtedness', government 'hand-outs' were being recycled towards the purchase
of bonds and treasury bills."
"In the Third World and Eastern Europe, central banks are
largely regulated by the IMF on behalf of the Paris and London
Clubs.
In the
West, central banks are to become 'independent' and 'shielded from political
influence'. What this means in practice is that the national Treasury is
increasingly at the mercy of private commercial creditors."
"Under article 104 of the Maastricht
Treaty, for instance, '(c)entral bank credit to the government is entirely
discretionary, the central bank cannot be forced to provide such
credit.'"
"...'the creation of money' (implying a command over real
resources) occurs within the inner web of the international banking system with
the sole pursuit of private wealth."
"In turn, a uniform political ideology has unfolded. A
'consensus' on macro-economic reform extends across the political
spectrum."
'''we must reduce the deficit, we must combat inflation'; 'the
economy is overheating: put on the brakes!'."
"the US Treasury Secretary, Mr Robert Rubin under the
Clinton administration, was a senior banking executive at Goldman Sachs, former
president of the World Bank, Mr Lewis Preston, was Chief Executive at J.P.
Morgan,..."
"Under these conditions, the practice of democracy in the
developed countries has also become a ritual. No policy alternative is offered
to the electorate. As in a one-party state, the results of the ballot have
virtually no impact on the conduct of state economic and social policy. In turn,
the state under the neoliberal policy agenda has become increasingly repressive
in curbing the democratic rights of its citizens."
"This poverty is not, however, the
consequence of a 'scarcity' of human and material resources. Rather it is the
result of a system of global oversupply predicated on unemployment and the
worldwide minimisation of labour costs."
"There are no straightforward and easy
'solutions' to a global financial crisis which looms dangerously in the years
ahead. The mere indictment of national governments and of a Washington-based
bureaucracy cannot constitute the basis of social action. Financial actors,
including banks and transnational corporations, must be pin-pointed. Social
movements and peoples organisations, acting in solidarity at national and
international levels, must target the various financial interests which feed
upon this destructive economic model."
"...namely a form of 'financial disarmament' adopted
forcefully by society and in opposition to those financial
interests."
"What is at stake is the massive concentration of
financial wealth and the command over real resources by a social minority. The
latter also controls the 'creation of money' within the international banking
system."
[And that was just a few quotes from the
introduction]
