A-Infos (en) "Wall Street's Imperialism" - a CHRONICLES column (March 1998) (fwd)

[MichaelP <papadop@PEAK.ORG>]

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     A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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Bob Djurdjevic writes:
 
Thought you may be interested in my inaugural column for the
Chicago-based CHRONICLES magazine.  CHRONICLES is "A Magazine of
American Culture" (its masthead line) published monthly by The Rockford
Institute.  My Global/Economic Affairs column is supposed to appear 10
to 12 times a year.

Bob Djurdjevic
TRUTH IN MEDIA
Phoenix, Arizona
e-mail: bobdj@djurdjevic.com

Truth in Media Web page: http://www.beograd.com/truth

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                            CHRONICLES
                A Magazine of American Culture
                   Vol. 22, No. 3, March 1998
 
     WALL STREET'S FINANCIAL TERRORISM
                          By Bob Djurdjevic
 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
Parallels between the British Empire and the New World Order Empire are 
striking.  It's just that the British crown relied on brute force to
achieve its objectives, while the NWO elite mostly use financial
terrorism (except for occasional raw power demonstrations, such as in
the Gulf War or in Bosnia).  The Great Asian Banking Crisis has just
accentuated both the similarities and the differences between the two
empires.

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.

"We cannot help but question the IMF's attitude. The IMF is acting as if
it is an economic conqueror," the governing Grand National Party of
Korea declared on December 4.  Korean newspaper headlines also lamented
the country's humiliation over the $57-billion IMF rescue package. 
"South Korea has virtually lost its economic sovereignty for the next
three years," said the Joongang Ilbo.

In the wake of the IMF invasions, local cultures are also under assault
world over, just as in Queen Victoria's time, being replaced by the
"more progressive Western" (read materialistic) way of life.

Whether McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nike or the Hollywood film studios really
represent a "progressive" culture is a dubious notion even in the U.S.,
let alone in East Asia, Russia or elsewhere in the world.  Just as is
the perception that these multinational companies are "American" -
presumably because of their headquarters' U.S. addresses.  The truth of
the matter is that these "Princes of the 20th Century" honor only one
flag - the Almighty $$ Dollar.  As a result, the Main Street Americans
are among the NWO's exploited victims, just as are their brethren in
East Asia or Russia.

Such misconceptions aside, there is no question, that McDonald's, Coke,
Nike or Hollywood represent the visible symbols of the NWO's
neo-colonialism.  They are the innocent-looking facades which mask the
destructive work of Wall Street's financial terrorists which operate
deep in the bowels of national economies.

"The financial turmoil in East Asia is a case in point," Malaysia's
Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, said on November 24 at the APEC
(Asia Pacific Economic Community) conference in Vancouver, Canada.  "Two
decades of growth was wiped out in two weeks... Vibrant economies have
been reduced to begging for aid from the IMF."  Dr. Mahathir added that
the free markets were "a recipe for slavery."
 
True.  But during the post-Cold War market globalization and expansion
(1990-1996), the Asia/Pacific region attracted about $375 billion in
foreign investments, according to UNCTAD, a United Nations agency. 
That's about 74 cents of every dollar the multinational companies had
invested anywhere in the developing world ($505 billion).  And it is
almost a quarter of all foreign investments made in the world during the
same period ($1.6 trillion - including the developed countries).
 
The rate of growth of the Asia/Pacific investments was also the highest
in the world - 29 percent compounded annually during the 1990s, almost
double that for the world as a whole (16 percent compounded annually). 
And then the bubble burst in the fall of 1997, and the recriminations
followed.

"Power corrupts," Dr. Mahathir lamented in Vancouver.  "As much as
government can become corrupt when invested with absolute power, markets
can also become corrupt when equally absolutely powerful.  We are seeing
the effect of that absolute power today - the impoverishment and misery
of millions of people and their eventual slavery."

Also true.  But too late for East Asia.  And for Dr. Mahathir, whose
country is supposed to host the next APEC conference.  Because GREED and
quest for POWER of the East Asian leaders has already enslaved them. 
"Dr. Mahathir, et. al." should have thought about that BEFORE taking the
NWO bait (money).  Now that they are a penny short and a day late,
remorse won't save them from the NWO/IMF brutal collection methods,
anymore than pleading for mercy would work with Mafia debt enforcers. 
Witness the quick buckling under of Indonesia, Thailand and Korea, for
example, and even of  Japan.  The once powerful and petulant "Asian
Tigers" are all turning into obedient pets, wagging their tails fast and
furiously to please the NWO masters.

But "one man's loss is another man's gain," they say.  The enormous
flight of capital from East Asia, about $1.3 trillion between mid-August
and late-November (the aggregate reduction in total capitalization of
the 11 East Asian stock exchanges), has landed mostly on the U.S. and
European shores.  This positive cashflow (from the Euro-American
perspective) has temporarily helped stabilize the Western stockmarkets
after the October 27 crash.

Also, Bill Clinton, that unabashed champion of the Wall Street elite's
causes, was all smiles at the Vancouver summit.  He reveled in the
triumph which APEC's endorsement of the IMF represented.  Clinton even
confidently predicted that he would eventually overcome his recent
setback when he and Newt Gingrich failed in their efforts to cajole,
bribe or muscle the majority of the House into approving the "fast
track" trade bill.

But the victory which Clinton delivered to his Wall Street and Big
Business backers at the APEC summit was a loss for America's Main
Street, including the small U.S. entrepreneurs - by far the most vibrant
and productive element of the U.S. economy.  They created 21 million
American jobs in the 1980s, while the FORTUNE 500 companies downsized to
the tune of three million people, according to a Wall Street Journal
report.  For their efforts, these American Main Street eager-beavers are
about to be hit again by our NWO-controlled  government - to help fund
the Wall Street elite's Asian bailouts.

Lest we forget, the IMF is a Western GOVERNMENT-supported "bank" in
which  the U.S. taxpayer is by far the largest guarantor.  When Clinton,
Gingrich, and other U.S. globalist politicians tell us that the IMF
solution is the way to solve the current Asian banking crisis, they
forget to mention that about 40 cents of every IMF bailout dollar comes
out of the U.S. taxpayer's pockets.  Just like they forgot in the
Mexican bailout in early 1995.

Thanks to their control of the U.S. media, the NWO elite and their
fair-haired boy - Bill Clinton - are still able to claim credit for the
recent strength of the U.S. economy, while helping themselves to the
pockets of the true American Main Street entrepreneurs - by using PUBLIC
funds to bail out PRIVATE interests in FOREIGN countries.  Out ELECTED
politicians get to make the calls about things like using taxpayers'
money for private rescue missions.  The NWO's APPOINTED proxies in the
Clinton cabinet do.

Case in point: On October 30, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin  (a
former Wall Street tycoon), reportedly called the top Treasury and White
House officials to tell them that he had agreed to contribute $3 billion
of U.S. taxpayers' money to the IMF bailout of Indonesian banks.  Get
this - the Treasury Secretary told the President what sort of a deal HE
had cut with his Wall Street banking pals!  This kind of sums up who is
really running this country and for whose benefit.

And these Wall Street and Washington hyenas will help themselves to a
few more tens of billions of dollars before the Great Asian Bailout is
over.
The money needed to resuscitate other Asian countries could amount to
more than $100 billion, double the Mexican rescue of 1995, according to
a Business Week report last November.  The potential price tag involves
not only the $40 billion commitment to Indonesia, but an additional $23
billion to Thailand and the Philippines.  Financial markets are now
betting that Korea, where debt-choked companies have also triggered a
banking crisis, and the government is running low on foreign reserves,
will need as much as $40 billion to clean up its mess.

Six of the top 30 corporations in Korea have filed for bankruptcy this
year alone.  If all of the bad loans were written off, the entire equity
of Seoul's commercial banks would disappear.  But not just of Korean
banks.  The Japanese banks are also on the hook to the "Asian tigers"
for some $263 billion; the European banks for about $155 billion, while
the American banks have lent them some $55 billion.

But the biggest troubles may be brewing in Japan and China, the largest
Asian markets.  Japan is in line for "a truly world class banking
crisis," a world authority on international finance predicted in an
interview with the Australian Financial Times. Dr. Morris Goldstein, the
former deputy head of research for the International Monetary Fund, now
with the Institute for International Economics in Washington DC, said
that "systemic risk" is the highest in Japan.  Subsequent failures of
Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, of the 100-year old Yamaichi Securities, of and
of Tokuy Bank bore out the validity of Dr. Goldstein's forecast.  In
late November, Moody's also downgraded the credit ratings of Long Term
Credit Bank of Japan, Nippon Credit Bank, Mitsui Trust, Yasuda Trust and
Chuo Trust.

A Jardine Fleming report suggested that the non-performing loans held by
all Japanese banks could account for almost 23 percent of Japan's gross
domestic product - a level surpassing even Thailand's failures (13
percent).  The notorious US savings and loan crisis was insignificant by
comparison.  The cost to the public sector of solving that crisis was
"only" around 3 percent of the GDP.  Jardine Fleming estimates that the
ultimate cost to the Japanese government will be 11 percent of the GDP
or about $500 billion.  No question that would be "a truly world class
crisis."

Then there's China, that darling of the NWO globalist elite.  During the
1990s, China attracted $158 billion of foreign investments, more than
any other country in the world except for the U.S., according to UNCTAD,
a United Nations agency  Japan, by contrast, got only about $8 billion
during the same period.  During the 1990s, foreign capital spending in
China had grown at a compound annual rate of 52 percent - more than
three times faster than the average world increase of 16 percent per
year.

And the pace of investment in China had been accelerating.  In 1996
alone, China received over $42 billion in foreign investments.  That's
about one-third of all investments made in the developing countries last
year.  And no wonder.  The master bailer had helped set the bait for the
victims of its future bailouts.  In September 1996, the IMF predicted
that Asia would lead the world in 1997 with an 8 percent GDP growth.

Now that a financial tsunami has hit Asia, and as analysts and
economists scramble to lower their Asia forecasts, investors' enthusiasm
is starting to ebb even in China.  Foreign investments contracted by
about 35 percent in the first 10 months of 1997, in part because China's
top banks have about $90 billion in problem loans.  Despite nearly two
decades of economic reform, the Chinese state still owns about 30
percent of the economy, employs two-thirds of the urban work force, and
accounts for more than 50 percent of industrial assets, according to an
October report by the Sunday Telegraph of London.  There are more than
300,000 state enterprises in China, and at least half are in debt.  To
an economist, these behemoths cry out for sweeping reform, the Telegraph
concluded.  Read - PRIVATIZATION, downsizing and layoffs, the IMF
specialty.

The country is wallowing in excess manufacturing capacity, and real
estate in Shanghai and Beijing has been over-built.  A British visitor
who has recently returned from a trip to China wrote to me on Nov. 6
that a member of the Shanghai Real Estate Board enthusiastically
proclaimed: "Shanghai property is hot."  To which the Briton replied:
"No, Shanghai property is empty."  The newly built malls and commercial
buildings which she had visited "were all eerily empty."

Why? Because the foreign investors had talked themselves into spending
hundreds of billions of dollars against the grossly inflated Asian
economic growth projections.  And because the greedy local chieftains
had talked themselves into believing that they can buy economic
prosperity with borrowed money.  Now that the bubble has burst in Asia,
both bankers and politicians are talking containment.  Which is why
Clinton agreed at the APEC summit in Vancouver to hold a global
conference on the banking crisis.

Meanwhile, while the financial elite debate how best to protect
themselves by using public funds, much more than jobs and real estate
are at stake in China and its neighbors in East Asia.  When factories
falter so do cheap or free education, medical care, housing, and the
broader sense of community that is part of urban life.  In Tianjin, for
example, an industrial city an hour's drive from Beijing, some families
have been plunged into poverty almost overnight after being laid off,
the Telegraph reported.  All this has led the London Telegraph to
conclude that "China edges to the brink of a social breakdown" as tens
of millions of Chinese workers face unemployment or even starvation.  We
always hear about these communist victims, but the same fate awaits the
tens of millions of workers in Korea, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia... They
will bear brunt of The Great Asian Banking Crisis, not the NWO bankers
and politicians who caused it.  Stories about such a human impact of
NWO's financial terrorism have been woefully absent from the front pages
of the world's newspapers.

The recent stories about Asia also do not discuss the role of the big 
Japanese investors who, with the ailing banks, owned $291 billion of
U.S. Treasury bills as of last July, or (8.5 percent of bills
outstanding).
That's up from 5.4 percent or $176 billion as of December 1994.  In
other words, in today's intricately interwoven global financial system,
it is virtually impossible that a failure of the Japanese banking system
would not affect other countries, including the U.S.  We've already seen
how a stockmarket crisis which began in Hong Kong soon spread like a
wildfire  around the globe.  Even if the fire seems to be temporarily
under control now, thanks in part to the Asian crisis (flight of
capital), we are evidently not out of the woods yet.

Maybe that's why the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Rubin, warned his Japanese
counterpart in a private letter, disclosed by the New York Times on
November 13, that the Japanese "should not be tempted to export their
way out of their troubles."  Which is kind of like telling a drowning
victim to keep gulping water instead of swimming.

Rubin is concerned (and rightly so) because one effect of the industrial
globalization has been a huge U.S. trade deficit, which stood at $192 
billion in 1996.  And if current trends continue, America's trade
deficit with the rest of the world could expand to $250 billion to $300
billion by early 1999, according to David Hale, a trade economist with
Zurich Insurance Group.

As of August, the U.S. trade deficit with China ($5.2 billion), for
example, was even bigger than that with Japan ($4.5 billion), or that
with the entire Western Europe and Canada - combined! ($3.6 billion). 
In 1997 to-date, our deficit with China is running 30 percent ahead of
last year's pace.

So Rubin's remark seems to have been driven by a parochial concern -
losing market share to low priced imports from Japan or other Asian
countries.  Yet those are precisely the benefits to consumers which the
NWO globalists have hailed during the recent debate on "fast track"
trade legislation.  "Free trade" advocates evidently have no trouble
talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Another important conclusion one can draw from Rubin's remark is that,
if the Japanese are not allowed by the NWO Empire to export their way
out of trouble, then they may have no choice but to dump their huge U.S.
T-bills holdings and other U.S. securities so as to feed the Nippon
banking beast.  And if the Japanese pull out of the U.S., that would
hardly be good news for the stockmarket, would it?

If you are a Wall Street investor, stand by for a few more
roller-coaster rides of the Dow.  But if you are a Main Street
entrepreneur or worker, brace yourself for a possibility of a global
recession.  "If it (recession) spreads (from Korea) to Japan, then it
goes all over the world," a Korean  analyst told the Sydney Morning
Herald.

What goes around, comes around - especially in globally integrated
markets. The U.S. is no exception, just as the British Empire wasn't. 
The only question is if the social unrest caused by the gouging of the
NWO elite may also become a global affair and the ultimate downfall of
the NWO.
 
-------------------------
Bob Djurdjevic is a market researcher and consultant who analyzes global
economic and geopolitical affairs (http://www.djurdjevic.com).  He is
also the founder of Truth in Media, a non-profit organization
(http://www.beograd.com/truth).
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