2. In the world of international banking, a vast network of American and European capitalists exists. It is
conceivable that this Euro-American network does not see boundaries in matters of trade and finance.
Perhaps, it also sees no serious compulsion to follow democratic conventions. This Euro-American network,
which holds considerable political clout, might have secretly agreed that the World Bank and IMF give
special status to America. In such an arrangement of reciprocity, the European nations would have special
status within the WTO.
It is known that America’s military power and economic clout can be leveraged over Asian nations, and
countries in the Middle East. Perhaps, many Western capitalists feel that for the good of the American and
European economies, the World Bank, IMF, WTO need to be run in a manner that will allow special
interests groups and big businesses in America and Europe to frame critical policies. This suggests that the
IMF must ensure that the United States Treasury is able to exert force on other Asian nations and be able to
protect American or European banks operating in Asian nations. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a professor
of economics at Columbia University, has been examining issues connected with the World Bank, IMF, and
WTO.
The IMF also offers a mechanism for quickly bailing out creditors from the G-7 nations. During the financial
crisis that gripped Asian nations, most of the creditors from European nations were safely bailed out by the
IMF. Many economists argue that the IMF was primarily created to keep the communists off the poorer
nations. Perhaps, the IMF was never seriously interested in helping nations which had no visible communistic
threat lurking in the corner. We note that IMF guidance has often caused serious shortages in the supply of
food and lead to starvation in developing nations that were not exposed to communist threats. It would be
wise to infer that the IMF will be willing to make huge sums of money to bail out European creditors, but
will be unwilling to make money available to arrange food subsidies in poor countries facing a financial
crisis.
The World Bank, IMF, and WTO do not strictly observe the rules of democracy in international governance.
At present, the G-7 member nations can exercise almost 50 percent of the power in voting. Furthermore,
America has a special veto status. In addition, America gets to choose the head of the World Bank. The
unwritten rule is that the American President has the freedom to select the chief of the World Bank.
However, as a formality, the selection of the chief is done by a secret voting procedure involving 24
members. For instance, the George Bush administration ignored mild protests from European members, and
had Paul Wolfowitz installed as the chief of the World Bank. Surely, these were not democratic initiatives.
Under ordinary circumstances, at least the European countries could have raised objection. However, the
banking, trading, and financial systems in Europe are managed by a complex web of bankers and capitalists
having a cordial link of brotherhood with bankers and capitalists in America. Most of the member nations
that seek money from the World Bank are developing countries without sufficient political clout. In total,
the World Bank and the IMF have enlisted 185 member nations.
Many economists and experts feel that individuals working for the IMF and World Bank are inadequately
qualified to the point of being grossly ill prepared to handle the responsibilities in a competent manner. In
the elite economic circles, it is believed that economists making policies at the World Bank do not have the
intellectual finesse to be able to understand the nuances of financial markets in the third world. They appear
to be puppet economists hired to carry out the hidden agendas of special interest groups within the G-7
nations. It is also believed, that these pawn economists work with economic models that are too simplistic
to reflect the real world situation in third world countries. At times of economic crisis, third world countries
that have declined the guidance of the IMF have done very well in recovering from a serious downturn.
2
3. Those that have followed the guidance of IMF have landed themselves in deeper trouble.
European and American economists of the current generation do not seem to understand the aberrant
economic problems of the developing nations in Africa, Asia, and South America. Incidentally, many
eminent economists and scholars have noticed that the Federal government in America is reluctant to follow
the advise from the IMF. However, officials of the World Bank insist on developing nations seeking approval
from the experts at IMF. When nations in Asia face an economic downturn, the IMF advises them to practice
austerity and establish higher interest rates. However, when the American economy faces a downturn IMF
recommends lowering interest rates and increased government spending to stimulate the American economy.
Though camouflaged as a benevolent organization, the IMF has all the characteristics of an organization with
ambitious political agendas.
Not only have the policy makers at the IMF managed to make callous errors of judgement, they have also
shown an unwillingness to learn from their mistakes. Countries such as China, India, and South Korea have
lost confidence in the IMF. Political leaders in China and South Korea probably see the IMF as an
organization with dishonorable agendas. The current belief in Asian bureaucratic circles is that the new wave
of regulations created by the WTO, IMF, and World Bank are in place to help the G-7 nations tackle the
emerging economic and political clout of Asian nations. At present, America is becoming overly dependent
on Asian nations to manage trade deficits. In fact, a prestigious American bank recently sought financial help
from wealthy banks in the Middle East and the Far East. The total bailout package ran into several billion
dollars. Emerging economic powers in Asia have now become wiser. They are now declining assistance from
the World Bank and the IMF.
Currently, the G-7 nations are threatened by lower labor costs in Asia. Labor saving technologies installed
by G-7 capitalists have resulted in high unemployment levels. About 20 percent of manufactured goods have
to be imported from emerging economies into the G-7 nations.
If American policy makers encourage simpler service jobs, manufacturing industries in America might have
to close down. Soon after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was executed, nearly half
a million manufacturing jobs in America vanished. In addition, the trade deficits with Canada and Mexico
tripled. Typically, trade deficits seem to originate from products not generally manufactured in America. For
instance, the American appetite for clothing merchandise and toys generate considerable trade deficits with
China. Large quantities of toys and clothing are imported into America from China where the average wage
hovers around $ 3 per hour. In America, the wages for the same category of jobs hover around $ 15 per hour.
While factory workers in China are underpaid, factory workers in America are overpaid. However, the most
interesting fact is that the Chinese people are being underpaid by American companies engaging in trade with
Chinese companies.
Capitalists, politicians, and bureaucrats who aggressively endorse free trade are also likely to endorse warfare
and military posturing when trade barriers are put in place by developing nations. Many poor nations in Asia
practice protectionism to encourage local industry. Developing nations that are trying hard to become self
sufficient in industrial capability have to erect trade barriers. At one time in industrial history, even America
had erected trade barriers. However, many capitalists in America and Europe do not want developing nations
in Asia and Africa to obstruct free trade with barriers and high tariffs.
Free trade, as desired by American and European capitalists might threaten world peace. For an American
politician, it is very hard to fight multinational corporations or special interest groups. Therefore, most
3
4. American politicians quickly come to realize that the best thing to do is tow the line of special interest groups
and global corporations. In other words, politicians who wish to remain in office would have to abandon their
social responsibilities and join the special interest groups.
America needs a new breed of politicians who can maintain high ethical standards, challenge capitalistic
avarice, and allow some elbow room for third world nations to reorganize themselves and attain self
sufficiency. While capitalists are not overly concerned about the plight of poor nations, responsible
politicians in America and Europe must show concern. Politicians must learn to see themselves as citizens
of the world and discourage the plunder of third world economies through free trade.
Japan had the opportunity to form important trade connections with her neighboring nations and help South
East Asia build a strong economy. Instead, Japanese politicians aligned the nation with America and
exhibited a self centered approach to trade and commerce. Japan began fostering a rival business relationship
with her poor trade neighbors. The Japanese also destroyed their own social fabric when they began
embracing Americanism. Many Asian and African cultures fail to instill social consciousness in their
citizens. Therefore, wealthy Asians and Africans are unwilling to invest in civil projects required to build
a nation.
The European nations decided to come together and form an European Union to gently counterbalance the
influence of America and Asia in global politics and trade. This put Great Britain in a tight spot. She did not
want to give up her allegiance to America and join a group of nations with many of whom she had a history
of military and cultural hostilities. Therefore, Tony Blain wanted to build new alliances with America.
Middle East politics provided a window of opportunity to Tony Blair.
Rice is not an important part of American diet. However, American farmers with mechanized harvesters grow
rice for export. Farmers and agro businesses have their government assist them in exporting grains to Asia
and Africa. The poor farmers in Asia and Africa face grinding poverty when American and European agro
products are dumped in their local markets. The political leaders of the third world nations representing the
famished farmers are unable to stand up and effectively confront the stubborn political club of the G-7
nations.
In America’s industrial economy during the first half of the twentieth century, American business executives
were culturally insular. They did not attempt to aggressively explore markets in Asia and Africa. Though
America was an industrialized nation, it was not exporting industrial goods in sufficient quantities. Instead,
America began exporting large quantities of agricultural products for balancing trade. This has caused great
hardship to developing countries in Africa and Asia whose forte is agricultural produce.
The powerful supermarket chains in America were able to bargain aggressively with the American farmers
and push them to the brink of bankruptcy. Also, the American farmers were not practicing crop rotation like
their counterparts in Europe and Asia. The government had to intervene and establish a practice of providing
subsidies to farmers. Therefore, the American subsidies to farmers were indirectly subsidizing the wealthy
supermarket capitalists. These capitalists could also devise ways to dump agro-products in third world
nations. Incidentally, supermarket chains often hired citizens at nearly minimum wage. Over a period of three
decades, the supermarkets have wiped out the corner grocery stores and small retail businesses in the
neighborhood.
American agro-businesses want developing nations to remove trade barriers to facilitate export of genetically
4
5. modified (GM) agricultural products. As European laws do not allow the introduction of GM agro-products,
many American companies want to dump these products in the poor Asian nations. American agro-business
companies are lobbying hard to have laws in Asian nations changed. Big businesses often resort to high
pressure tactics and intimidation to make Asian governments change policies. These new policies will squash
the rights of Asian farmers. Hundreds of Asian farmers who have been denied fair trade and driven to
bankruptcy have committed suicide. Incidentally, this explains why the Soviets and Chinese had developed
a dislike for Western capitalists.
The G-7 once represented the seven most industrialized nations of the world. The G-7 included America,
Canada, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, and Japan. In the twenty first century, these nations may
not accurately represent the greatest economies in the world, but their historical status has granted them high
status in international commerce. Governments of G-7 nations are often compelled by big businesses and
capitalists to allow the skillful exploitation of poor nations. When developing nations disagree on terms
relating to imports from the Western nations, they are slapped with economic sanctions. Therefore, the cycle
of exploitation of the developing economies by the industrialized nations continue. Sometimes, incompetent
political leaders in third world nations allow such exploitation to continue.
Most citizens of the G-7 nations are not aware of the designs of their capitalists and big businesses. A
particularly disheartening problem in modern times is that the voters and citizens in industrial nations are
ignorant of the unfair trade practices encouraged by their politicians and capitalists. The newspapers and the
TV media do not report news in this category. When the British were colonizing India, the British capitalists
forcibly bought raw cotton from Indian farmers, while the British government prevented Indian factories
from weaving cloth. Instead, cloth from Indian cotton was produced in Manchester and shipped back to India.
The ordinary citizens of Britain were probably unaware of the unethical conduct of their capitalists.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed that free trade between countries would eventually lead to peace. He was
of the view that trade barriers erected during and after the industrial revolution had resulted in wars which
had endangered the lives of millions of innocent people. According to Roosevelt, trade barriers could
eventually lead to hostilities and warfare. Roosevelt conveniently disregarded the popular economic
hypothesis that free trade could only function well between equally developed or equally under-developed
nations.
American and European trade diplomats also managed to create an impression that free trade is defined as
transfer of goods under the rules conceived by capitalists from America and Europe. In recent decades,
European nations have been plagued with high unemployment and under-employment. We must further
acknowledge that most of the industrially advanced nations of the world seem to be facing a new generation
of social and economic problems. These industrialized nations are exhibiting an inadequate growth rate of
about 2 percent. Germany and France have been coping with the problems of unemployed youth engaging
in systematic rioting. Under such circumstances, it would be outlandish for industrial nations to be willing
to allow liberal imports of textiles, electronic goods, hardware, automobiles, and agro-products from the
developing countries. Without serious consequences, America and Europe can no longer welcome unlimited
imports from Asian countries.
For hundreds of years, racketeering, swindling, and deception have been a part of international trade.
Incidentally, in earlier decades, colonist governments had engaged in state sponsored swindling. In the
twentieth century, swindling had to be legitimized. It seems as if modern institutions such as the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund (IMF), U.S. Treasury, and the World Trade Organization have borrowed many
5
6. ingenious ideas and ideologies from traders of the nineteenth century. In those days, trade occurred between
less civilized societies. In the nineteenth century, there were no systems in place to ensure ethical business
practices. History repeats itself. The murky methods of trade of the nineteenth century have now been
refined, perfected, and put in practice for controlling international money markets, regional politics, trade,
and commerce.
The IMF, WTO, and World Bank are multi-layered organizations where the top layer has a vital hidden
agenda which the bottom layer is completely unaware of. Many economists working in the second layer for
the IMF might naively believe that the organization has been set up to offer assistance to stabilize economies
of developing nations. On the other hand, the top layer bureaucrats at IMF know that their primary goal is
to assist the financial communities in America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom
in maintaining supremacy.
The World Bank appears to be an organization with sophisticated political agendas. The World Bank was
also interested in encouraging the developed countries to move their toxic waste producing industries to the
least developed economies. Any organization claiming to be for the benefit of the world community would
not be suggesting that pollution be moved to third world countries. Incidentally, the World Bank wants water
distribution in developing countries to be privatized. This is another odd agenda, as there is big money to be
made in the water distribution business. Many European countries want the water distribution in developing
countries to be privatized. The Western companies want to bid for the water distribution projects in third
world nations.
The integrative role of the WTO, World Bank, and the IMF maybe to protect American and European
economies by putting them on a new path of growth by stimulating exports. We notice that the IMF prefers
to give the top executive power to European citizens. The World Bank prefers to give top executive powers
to American citizens. Perhaps, as an organization largely controlled by Western interests, even the WTO
could covertly provide a legitimate facade to carefully mislead the developing nations into believing that a
level playing field for free trade can be created. Then, the objective of the WTO could be to rope in the poor
nations into a net and force them to cut tariffs, remove trade barriers, and increase their imports from the G-7
nations. This would help the G-7 nations temporarily combat unemployment and poor growth rates until
better economic structures are put in place. In the meantime, the free trade might end up generating enormous
inequalities and disparities between the developed and developing economies. The developing nations could
get locked in a downward spiral. Mexico and Argentina experimented with free trade and ran into serious
economic problems.
Most usually, the concept of free trade works well between nations whose industrial development is at the
same level. Therefore, when the concept of free trade is applied across nations with different levels of
industrial development, the less developed nations could get pushed further into impoverishment. It is
conceivable that artful economists at the WTO or World Bank are in a position to easily concoct new theories
and steer their economic analysis to suit the economic agenda of the G-7 nations. Using the faulty analysis
they could even try to produce a document that looks credible enough to direct a new policy. In other words,
economists in these organizations run the risk of being bought by European and American special interest
groups. Furthermore, the skillful economists could try to make their analysis complex enough to be beyond
the comprehending ability of political leaders of the developing nations. Many nations in Africa and Asia
are run by political leaders who have close connections with opportunists.
Quite often, free trade has been observed to result in job losses in nations that participate. However, the rich
6
7. capitalists are never overly concerned about jobless growth and wage less growth. Industrial nations are
generally satisfied at keeping the unemployment rate at about 4 percent. This scheme ensures that the
pathetically indolent and incompetent citizens of a nation, who fall in the bottom 4 percent, are eliminated
from the industrial workforce. However, in mature industrial economies, under-employment hovers around
25 percent. As a classic case of under-employment, a college degree is now required to earn a high school
graduate's salary. In industrialized economies, when women entered the nations workforce in large numbers,
the wage levels fell significantly.
At a great economic and social cost, the American nation has stationed battle ready aircraft carriers,
submarines, and aircrafts at strategic locations on the globe. To defend weak nations from communist threats,
the American policing scheme with dependable European alliances has a fairly extensive footprint. The
Soviet Union might have been dismantled, but there are many nations in Latin America and Asia which
continue to have faith in communism. While China is experimenting with free market economics and
communism, Cuba is experimenting with socialism.
As private policing does not come for free, many nations in the world have chosen to ignore the issue of
America’s economic and political agendas. American policing brings enormous benefits to poor countries
with untapped mineral resources. Impoverished nations that sign up for American policing services need not
invest heavily in military infrastructure. In the event of a sudden crisis, just a ten dollar phone call to the
White House administration will bring American aircraft carriers and submarines into attack position. Like
an insurance policy with a modest premium, this certainly is a great military luxury for impoverished nations
whose political leaders have faith in American capitalism.
While eagerly volunteering to organize policing activities, American politicians and capitalists are willing
to sacrifice the lives of able bodied men and women in uniform. They are also willing to take flak for their
decisions. This in itself is very honorable. Incidentally, it may be hard to place an exact economic value on
human lives of the soldiers in the front lines, and incorporate this value into the social cost of protection. As
America has a relatively small contingent of infantrymen, the world policing job might drive America into
a situation of conscription if wars have to be fought simultaneously in several theaters.
It costs a lot of money to maintain space satellites, aircraft carriers, missile defense systems, and nuclear
submarines for worldwide policing. Perhaps, the nations in the world have an obligation to foot the bill
required for the policing infrastructure. Within an international monetary system, the cost of global policing
could have been recovered elegantly through a global police protection tax. However, the brazen
unconventionality of collecting protection money for American world policing might have invited harsh
criticism from nations in Europe. In fact, the French intelligentsia would have equated this practice to the
Sicilian Mafia’s scheme of extorting protection money.
America is in a position to recover a modest amount of protection money in a camouflaged way through
unfair trade practices. For instance, unfair trade through farm subsidies is a good way of covertly recovering
the costs of policing. Unfair trade with wealthier European nations could help fund the policing costs
incurred on poorer Asian nations. To America, it would not matter where the money came from, as long as
policing expenses were covered. Incidentally, the European nations might feel morally justified in
establishing unfair trade practices with Asian nations. Later, concealed profits through unfair trade can be
diverted into the American treasury for police expenditure.
The WTO is an organization that can legitimize unfair trade to help Europe and America raise money for
7
8. protecting Asian nations from communistic threats. Perhaps, the secret agenda of the WTO extends beyond
dealing with simple trade issues and commerce. At the WTO, the leaders of the G-7 nations probably have
to work out the financing methods that support international policing. These plans might constitute classified
information, that cannot be made public. For instance, these plans might require the close scrutiny of
geopolitical objectives of Chinese communists.
A culture of compulsive consumerism makes America the biggest consumer of merchandise. America buys
cars from Japan and toys from China. Consumer spending in America drives the Asian economy. At present,
emerging economies of the world account for nearly 40 percent of world business in terms of exports. The
leaders of Asian nations feel that emerging economies should have a greater level of participation in official
domains of the WTO, IMF, and the World Bank.
India, China, and Brazil are seeking organizational changes to attract greater attention. Perhaps, the changes
are not forthcoming because of a second agenda involving international policing. Because of the potential
role of the WTO in indirectly funding policing operations of the future, the top executive positions in these
organizations have to be held by Americans and Europeans. It would be imprudent to allow executives from
South America and Asia into the planning domain. It is a well known fact that several socialist and
communist groups are active in South America and Asia.
8
