EMERGING MARKETS JOCKEY FOR IMF ECHELON, FRENCH OLIGARCHIC PUPPET GETS POST

EMERGING MARKETS JOCKEY FOR IMF ECHELON, FRENCH OLIGARCHIC PUPPET GETS POST

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Emerging markets are currently contesting for top posts in the Jurassic IMF. The downfall of Strauss-Khan, former managing director of the said bank, highlighted the deep crisis that has beset the bank lately, a crisis that threatens its very own legitimacy.

My position about the IMF was clear since the middle of last decade yet: abolish the bank, and let the member nations concur a new global financial architecture. The IMF was used by Western financier oligarchs to bleed the 3rd world to bone dry misery, it is a thug bank that clobbered member nations in order to fatten the purse of select financier families, and it continues to make members such as Greece suffer via forced austerity programs.

At any rate, just recently the French finance minister, Madame Legard, was selected to replace Strauss-Khan. What do we expect, that the evil Western financiers will permit the ‘Mandingo nations’ to get that juicy post?

Below is an update from the DevEx regarding the debates and actions by member nations regarding the Jurassic thug bank.

[Philippines, 03 July 2011]

From: DevEx – http://www.devex.com
In IMF Leadership Debate, Emerging Countries Renew Push for Greater Representation in International Forums
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the world’s top emerging economies, released on Wednesday (May 25) a joint statement where they dismissed as obsolete the existing convention of naming a European to the top job at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF directors from these countries stressed that the next IMF managing director should be the best candidate chosen through a merit-based and transparent process, not on the basis of nationality.
The joint statement is the latest, and perhaps most concrete and concerted, effort by emerging countries to assert their voice at IMF. Emerging and developing countries, particularly the so-called BRICS countries, have been pushing for more representation at IMF and a chance to have a candidate from their ranks lead the organization.
This push by emerging nations for a bigger say in IMF appears to be part of a broader campaign of middle-income countries for a more prominent role in the international community. China, for instance, continues to expand its assistance program in Africa, while India, Brazil and South Africa are also positioning themselves as “alternative” sources of development finance.
This campaign is not going unnoticed. The “traditional” donors, in particular, are beginning to recognize the changing global political and financial landscape: The United Kingdom recently indicated its intention to engage with emerging nations, while the United States has already entered into several partnerships with Brazil.
In IMF itself, emerging nations have been “victorious” in having European countries agree to cede some of their seats in the fund’s executive board in their favor. This deal, sealed in October 2010, increased the emerging countries’ influence and voting power in the board, but they are still less influential than industrial countries, particularly the United States. Whether this increased clout will contribute to their campaign to end Europe’s dominance of IMF remains to be seen.

IMF-WORLD BANK MERGER’S A HIDEOUS MONSTROSITY!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Plans are now afoot at merging the World Bank and the IMF, the two economic pillars of the post-war alliance of nations to foster cooperation and development. They came straight out of the Breton Woods agreement, and were rightly called the ‘Breton Woods Agencies’ then.

The merger is among the responses of the technocratic-financier-political elites of the North to the crashing global economy. The ‘virtual economy’ based on financier speculation and worthless bubbles, or otherwise ‘casino economy’ of the wealthy, had burst so badly. The implosion of the financial system had seen the closure of big banks and the alarming loses of others most specially those that had enormous exposures to the subprime realty market in the USA.

The question is whether this merger is really the appropriate response to a system problem. Many experts and quarters the world over have been clamoring, since way back 1990s yet, for the convening of a ‘new Breton Woods’ and the institution of a new global financial architecture. I was among these experts on the Philippine side, and many of us are inside government as executives and legislators.

However, an IMF-World Bank merger is farthest from our mind. The IMF particularly has this notoriety for prescribing shock treatment on economies in crisis, particularly the developing countries or DCs, that do not at all mitigate the long term impact of structural problems. On the contrary, the austerity pills of the IMF were shown to have caused further contraction, depression, and deterioration of once thriving emerging markets.

Let’s face it, the IMF and World Bank are largely the institutional agents of the global financial cartels. They do not represent the true interest of sovereign nation states, do not exercise any accountability at all except to the financier sponsors behind the backs of the IMF-World Bank boards and leadership, and are instruments to encumber nations into perpetual debt peonage. The IMF-World Bank group represents the forces aimed at destroying sovereign nation-states and no less.

The North does not have a monopoly of wisdom in salving the ailments of the global economy, and so we peoples of the south  may just have to push for actions that would see how the catastrophic impact of the global economic implosion will be mitigated. Let the OECD propel their own oligarchs’ self-aggrandizing actions, while we patriots of the South move on to save our people, nations, environments and institutions from further predatory onslaughts by the greedy global oligarchs.

The IMF-World Bank merger is a hideous monstrosity. Be forewarned!

[Writ 26 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

ANY OLIGARCH JAILED AFTER SUBPRIME BUBBLE BURST?

Erle Frayne  Argonza

Hail the financial cartels! Hail the Grand Oligarchs of the North! Thus spoke Zarathustra.

They came, they saw, they looted…and got unpunished. This is the fact of all facts, the ‘praxiological core’ (to use a philosopher’s thesis here in Manila), of the oligarchy’s gargantuan looting of the public purse everywhere. “We are children of Zeus, reside in Olympus, and are beyond the Law,” said they.

Let’s go back to the subprime bubble in the USA, and the post-bubble burst stage. As soon as the housing bubble began in the aftermath of the recession in the USA (2001-02), I was among those analysts who were alarmed at the flawed strategy that the US state officialdom to shore up an ailing economy.

The strategy was no different from the dot.com speculation of the previous years. So much propaganda hype was done to intensify the tenor of the dot.com revolution, which led to massive financier speculation in this sector. Result: the bubble burst, almost bringing the entire US economy down with it in 2001.

Seemingly unmindful of the bad economics that took place, the fed and monetary authorities permitted the bubbling of another sector, housing this time, to ‘prime up’ the ailing economy, coupled with ‘tax cuts’. I’m sure if Franklin Delano Roosevelt were alive yet, he will be squirming at the terribly flawed strategy and would prefer to just die pronto rather than see voodoo economics destroy his nation in the short run.

Bubbles burst in due time, and so the oligarchic game is that before the burst happens, fatten your purse in as rapid a manner as possible. The derivatives market is the best purse fattener, all other instruments being secondary.

Soon enough, the bubble did burst, and banks across the Atlantic (USA, EU) squirmed the most over the bankruptcy-inducing crash from the burst. Horror of all horrors, once mighty financier groups such as Bear & Stearns got badly bankrupt overnight, was sold for cheap dirt price, and simply evaporated.

And to add horror to the horrors, no oligarch or exec was ever jailed for that crime of massive looting of the consumer purse. Holy Maria!

My God! Oligarchs are the Holiest of all Hollies! We ordinary consumers are the filthy pariahs, the Damned Outcastes who are treated as mere members of an amorphous ‘Eater class’ by the Holiest. Hail the Oligarchy!

[Writ 13 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]