The collision of global markets and social mood

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Debtocracy


If you haven't yet seen this documentary about the Greek debt crisis, it's well worth seeing.

Note how many times the IMF gets called out, almost more than the ECB. Goldman Sachs gets called out, and Capitalism does too.

I'd like to comment that Capitalism is not the problem. Fractional reserve banking is the problem. To judge Capitalism while it is essentially high-jacked by the Federal Reserve is to misunderstand it completely. Capitalism creates wealth. Fractional reserve banking creates corporate Fascism. Corporate Fascism creates extremely large divides between the rich and poor.

There is also a fascinating section about Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. As you might expect, soon after he told the US and the IMF to stuff it, he was the subject of a coup that was rumored to have been instigated by, you guessed it, the US.

By the way, I once met John Perkins, the economic hit man interviewed in the film. He said his most regretful "deal" ever was what he did to Ecuador. This excerpt is from the prologue of his book Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man :

"Because of EHM (economic hit men) projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an inordinate share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using its capital to help the millions of its citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished. The only way Ecuador can buy down its foreign obligations is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East. The global empire demands its pound of flesh in the form of oil concessions.... "

I believe that at some point (it may or not have already started) there will be another debt deleveraging cycle that will be worse than 2008. As global markets plunge, the theme of this film will spread worldwide.

No comments:

Post a Comment