From: "David Guyatt"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
When I last checked, the "derivative"
market alone had somewhere close to $36 TRILLION outstanding (based on
memory so may be out slightly). Derivatives ARE gambling - pure and
simple. What this figure tells numerous analysts and economists is
that the US economy is set for a major, major bust and that despite
the best efforts of the "Plunge Protection Team" to manpulate
markets - they are eventually going to crash bigtime.
I read Chomsky and rate him highly.
I interviewed him about 18 months ago with a focus on his perceptions
about the origin of the cold war which he wrote about in WHAT UNCLE SAM
REALLY WANTS. Chomsky agreed that the cold war was manufactured.
The reason for this he explains in Uncle Sam was outlined in the top
secret Policy Planning Study 23 (PPS 23) written by George Kennan.
Chomsky abbreviates the core points of this study as follows:
" We [the USA] have about
50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population....In this
situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real
task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will
permit us to maintain this position of disparity....To do so, we will have
to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will
have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national
objectives....We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives
such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in
straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic
slogans, the better. "
Keenan went on to outline the economic policy
backdrop to South America which is relevant in terms of the later explosion
of drugs coming out of that continent. According to Chomsky, Kennan's
policy in South America was:
"...In
a briefing for US ambassadors to Latin American countries in 1950, Kennan
observed that a major concern of US foreign policy must be "the
protection of our [i.e. Latin America's] raw materials." We must
therefore combat a dangerous heresy which, US intelligence reported, was
spreading through Latin America: "the idea that the government has
direct responsibility for the welfare of the people."
The dismantling of the gold standard in 1971 by Nixon soon led to the
explosion of the oil price via the so called "oil shocks" of
1973. There is a host of facts that powerfully suggest this was also a
manufactured event. Author William Engdahl in his excellent book
"A Century of War" says that the decision to increase the price of
oil by 400% (and blame it on OPEC) was taken at the May 1973 meeting of
Bilderberg's Saltsjobaden conference. Reading the Saltsjobaden
Conference notes supports Engdahl's contention.
The key point in so far as the explosion of South American drug
traffick is ocnerned, is the re-cycling of Middle East - principally Saudi -
oil money (i.e., petrodollars) through the London Euromarket to the
third world... largely South America and Africa of course. Quickly
hocked up to their eye balls in loans they didn't need or couldn't
afford (but which fitted "back-pockets" very nicely) Sth American
nations had to generate significant hard foreign currency reserves (US
Dollars) to service their debt. Enter Cocaine and the secret policy to
narcotize and tax large numbers of the population of the USA as a result of
"dealing in straight power concepts" as Kennan stated.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 5:57
AM
Subject: [CIA-DRUGS] Chomsky,
political economy and drug money
From: "Thomas Mountain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Relating to drug profits and the
economy...
In Noam Chomsky"s latest,
"Profits over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order" he
says...
"The most important changes took place
over 25 years ago, when the Nixon Administration dismantled the postwar
global economic system, within which the United States was, in effect,
the worlds banker, a role it could no longer sustain. This unilateral
act ( to be sure, with the cooperation of other powers) led to a huge
explosion of unregulated capital flows. Still more striking is the shift
in the composition of the flow of capital. In 1971, 90 percent of
international financial transactions were related to the real
economy--trade or long-term investments--and ten percent were
speculative. By 1990 the percentages were reversed, and by 1995, 95
percent of the vastly greater sums were speculative, with daily flows regularly exceeding the combined foreign
exchange reserves of the seven biggest industrial powers, over $1
trillion a day, and very short term, about 80% with round trips of a
week or less."
If one guesstimates (trying to err on the conservative side) that
between 1985 and 1995 an average of $1 billion a day ($350 billion a
year?) was injected into this daily flow from the international drug
trade, by 1995 you would have seen a total of over $3.5
trillion.
This sum would account for almost a
majority of capital circulating internationally.
Does
this hold water, all of you political economists and researchers out
there in CIA-Drugs@onelist?
By the way, does any
one else read Chomsky?
from Tom Mountain
still chasing the
One Armed Bandit out here in paradise
ps. Our "Drugs and the One
Armed Bandit Series, Part 1" starts here on prime time next week on
ch. 52 featuring Alex Cockburn in part 1.
