Globalist NYC Forum... World Bank Whistleblower (Feb 6, 2002)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2002/2-2

Feb. 6, 2002

Davos Moves to Park Avenue...

Evils of Globalism: "Reality Multiplied by Perception"

World Bank’s Former Chief Economist Blows the Whistle on Globalism He Helped Create; Spreading Misery, Corruption around the World in Four Steps

NEW YORK, Feb. 5 - United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, closed the World Economic Forum yesterday (Feb. 4) at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan with a stern message. Addressing several thousand of the most powerful members of the globalist “elite,” which included the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates, Annan warned that, the problem was "one of reality multiplied by perception," according to today’s New York Times report.

"The reality is that power and wealth in this world are very, very unequally shared, and that far too many people are condemned to lives of extreme poverty and degradation," Annan said. "The perception, among many, is that this is the fault of globalization, and that globalization is driven by a global elite, composed of, at least represented by, the people who attend this gathering."

That perception, in fact, formed a major sub-theme throughout the meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Times noted. Though a good portion of the discussions focused on economic and business trends, the best-attended sessions seemed to be those centered on social issues. One reason for it were the massive protests - from Seattle in December 1999, to Washington, DC, in 2000, and to Turin, Italy, last summer (see “Toward a New Multipolar World in the New Millennium” - Dec. 17, 1999).

At the forum, most business leaders seemed to agree with the general sentiment expressed by Annan. "We need a discussion about whether the rich world is giving back what it should in the developing world," Mr. Gates, the Microsoft chairman, told a session on "Business Leader to Global Leaders." "I think there is a legitimate question whether we are."

Annan, who has spoken to previous Davos gatherings, acknowledged that participants were not always what their critics made them out to be, though the list of the rich and powerful — besides celebrity magnates like Soros and Gates, included sheiks and princes from Persian Gulf oil states, and corporate chiefs and senior politicians. The core of the World Economic Forum comprises the world's 1,000 largest corporations, at least those identified as such by Klaus Schwab, the founder and organizer of the gatherings.

And now, with that as a preamble, check out our next story about the real face of globalism, as seen and told by one of the former World Bank insiders, turned a whistleblower…

4. World Bank’s Former Chief Economist Blows the Whistle on Globalism He Helped Create

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 - In the aftermath of the Southeast Asia crisis in 1997, you saw us invoke parallels between British imperialism of past centuries, and Wall Street’s New World Order Empire. Here’s, for example, an excerpt from this writer’s Chronicles column (Mar. 1998), “Wall Street’s Financial Terrorism” about it:

“Parallels between the British Empire and the New World Order Empire are striking... The British Empire was built by colonizing other countries, seizing their natural resources, and shipping them to England to feed the British industrialists' factories. In the wake of the "red coats" invasions, local cultures were often trampled and replaced by a "more progressive" British way of life.

The Wall Street-dominated NWO Empire is being built by colonizing other countries with foreign loans or investments. When the fish is firmly on the hook, the NWO financial terrorists pull the plug, leaving the unsuspecting victim high and dry. And begging to be rescued.

In comes the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its bailout recipes - privatization, trade liberalization and other austerity reforms - amount to seizing the target countries' natural and other resources, and turning them over to the NWO elites - just as surely as the British Empire did by using cruder methods.”

You’ve also seen us warn as far back as February 1998, about the dire consequences of globalization in Argentina, for example (see "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" - TiM GW Bulletin, Feb. 14, 1998):

“(Carlos) Menem's globalization of the Argentine economy - read privatization and sale of former state-owned assets to foreign interests - has caused millions of Argentineans to become exiles in their own country. They were disenfranchised by their own elite in the name "free trade" and "progress." Just as were the millions of Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Koreans, Thais... later on.”

Four years later, as bloody riots, looting and killings have followed the hardships caused by globalism, the Argentinean economy lies in ruins as another monument to man’s gullibility; another testament to Wall Street’s imperialism.

As for the plunder and destruction of Russia, we’ve written literally tomes about it (check out the TiM Russian Index, starting with the 1995 cornerstone piece, “New Drang Nach Osten” (“New Push Toward the East”), in which we said:

“You can now also add Boris Yeltsin to the line-up of "bought" East European politicians, and Russia to the list of the nations subjugated by the U.S. and German economic power. On April 12, 1995, the day the IMF finally approved his loan, Yeltsin set the price for "Mother Russia’s" sovereignty - a mere $7 billion! The amount seems like a bargain-basement price which may go down in history alongside some other major give-aways, such as the sale of Alaska by the Russians, or of today’s California-through Texas territory by the Mexicans.”

Finally, a year ago we said that the “Robber Baron” Era Is Back (TiM, Jan. 2001); that a full-out globalist assault on national economies and sovereignty is raging on a global scale. The era we are living in now is the culmination of the “Perpetual War for Perpetual Commerce” (Chronicles, Aug. 1998) New World Order strategy. This concept kicked into high gear in the New Millennium.

The preceding were only a few of many warnings that this writer and the TiM issued over the years about the dangers of a plutocratic and autocratic society that the New World Order crowd are trying to construct before our very eyes, and with our very money (also see “The Great American Hoover”, Washington Times, Nov. 1997). We said some of these “crises” were a part of a deliberate well-planned scheme (see “Washington Crisis Factory,” Mar. 1999), not some accidental quirks of fate, as the NWO architects would have us believe.

Well, now you no longer have to take just our word for it. One of “them” (a former NWO architect) has defected to “our” side - the side of freedom of thought, love of truth and pride of individuality and national identity. What this former World Bank “globalizer who came in from the cold” said to a London Observer investigative reporter in a series of interviews (The Observer, April 29, 2001; also published at Greg Palast's web site on Oct. 10, 2001), corroborates each and every theory you’ve heard from us. And then some. In other words, this NWO defector adds to them some more color and meat, as well as some more blood and tears.

How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades

It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.

But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.

He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.

At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.

Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.

Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.'

Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.

'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'

Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.

'It's a little like the Middle Ages,' says the economist, 'When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'

Permission to re-print granted by the author. Greg Palast is an investigative reporter for London's Sunday paper, The Observer, and BBC TV's Newsnight. Read, view or subscribe to his column at www.GregPalast.com. This article is taken from his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, out in March.

To check out this Greg Palast story at his web site, click here. To see the original Observer version, click here.