Dear KAG: 20201015 Open Thread

FINALLY—
The use of the CHINA virus to DRIVE ALL COUNTRIES INTO SOVEREIGN BANKRUPTCY thereby placing them in the full control of the Banksters via IMF loans with LOTS of strings attached.
The 1944 Breton Woods Agreement established the IMF and the World Bank because “The stock of gold grew slowly; the stocks of dollars and pounds could grow without limit. Member countries accepted the obligation to treat the two alike. In practice this meant they had to accept inflation or appreciate their exchange rate.” The IMF/World Bank used Structural Adjustment Policies, SAPs, to open up countries to exploitation by corporations. Instead of a British Empire overtly colonizing the world, heavily criticized by a voting public, we have Corporate and Banking interests united in the covert control of whole nations in the name of profit.

Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and help them make debt repayments on the older debts owed to commercial banks, governments and the World Bank. Although SAPs are designed for individual countries but have common guiding principles and features which include export-led growth; privatisation and liberalisation; and the efficiency of the free market.
SAPs often result in deep cuts in programmes like education, health and social care…
By devaluing the currency and simultaneously removing price controls, the immediate effect of a SAP is.. that riots are a frequent result.
*http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html

….I’ve long argued that the International Monetary Fund and its sister organization, the World Bank, constitute an Evil Empire. The two international financial institutions (IFI’s) were founded in 1945 during the genesis of the United Nations as do-good enterprises. The IMF would assist countries trying to keep their currencies tied to the dollar under the terms of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The World Bank would lend money at low interest rates gathered from the rich countries to help poor countries get off their backs.
Over the years, the process has been corrupted, with both the IMF and World Bank becoming controlled by the multinational corporations and their banks. [Actually it is the banks and their corporations. — GC] When President Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971, the IMF’s reason for existence evaporated, because Bretton Woods and the fixed dollar went up in smoke. Now the problem for the big banks like Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and the Bank of America became two-fold:
1) As surplus dollars accumulated in their reserves and there were no credit-worthy Americans wanting to borrow, the banks had to think of ways to lend the money abroad or it would sit in their vaults earning zip, which means it really is losing money as the paper dollar — freed from its gold anchor — was inflating and losing purchasing power. Citigroup’s Walter Wriston (who died last week) came up with the idea that the surplus should be loaned to poor countries, even though they had no collateral, because governments had to pay off their hard-currency loans or lose their international credit ratings.
2) If the countries that borrowed from Chase or Citicorp could not pay back interest or principle and did not worry about stiffing the private bankers, they would have to swallow the non-performing loans. The solution was to have the IMF, looking for something to justify its existence, step in to collect the debt. All it had to do was persuade the U.S. Congress to ante up billion or two of taxpayer dollars to fill their coffers (and replenish them from time to time). They could then go to the deadbeat country and say, We will give you this money so you can pay Chase and Citicorp what you owe them, but you will have to raise taxes on your own people and devalue your currency as the conditions for the loan! What we have in this book from Mr. Perkins is an account of a foot soldier in these operations of the Evil Empire….
*https://www.lewrockwell.com/2005/01/jude-wanniski/confessions-of-an-economic-hitman/

This task force goes all the way back to 2004.
Debt Restructuring and Sovereign Bankruptcy
*https://web.archive.org/web/20100604212219/http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/ipd/programs/program.cfm?prid=15&ptid=2
Fast forward to today:
Weak International Economic Cooperation In Response to the COVID-19 Crisis

This paper analyzes several of the dimensions of weakening multilateralism in the area of economic cooperation during the COVID-19 crisis. Professor José Antonio Ocampo argues that international cooperation during the COVID-19 crisis has been weaker than during the 2008-09 North Atlantic Financial crisis. This contrasts with the more aggressive domestic economic policies adopted by the developed countries.
The COVID-19 hit the world in the midst of a process of weakening multilateralism. In addition, the world economy has been hit by the deepest and most synchronized recession in world history—a 6.1% reduction of world GDP at market exchange rates according to the most recent IMF projections.
In terms of financial cooperation, the emergency financing facilities of the International Monetary Fund have that been made available to a large number of countries and the capacity of the World Bank to increase its lending stand out as positive steps, but the U.S. veto to an issue of IMF’s Special Drawing Rights and the lack of a call by the G-20 to capitalize multilateral development banks stand out as negative features. The crisis of the World Trade Organization and the tensions that international trade was facing prior to the crisis stand out as the most troublesome features of international economic cooperation.
Finally, the paper argues that some advance has been made in the negotiations of international tax cooperation, but it remains to be seen what the final outcome of those negotiations would be.

2013 — World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained….
Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”
[This is the paper I keep citing, The Network of Global Corporate Control .-GC]
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The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”
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Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.
“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”