Time for a change...

I really think it’s time we opened our eyes to the way the global economy is structured. I think it’s time for a change.

We currently live under a dangerous system of corporatism. This system lets a small number of private individuals control just about every aspect of the global economy. These people are bankers, business men and lawyers and they are unaccountable and secretive in their dealings. They have a legal duty to put profit before all other considerations. If they screw things up we can’t get rid of them because we didn’t elect them and most of us are not shareholders in their corporations.

Take the IMF as an example. The IMF is in my opinion a criminal organisation that crushes developing countries by forcing them to develop economies that benefit foreign corporations rather than their own citizens. The IMF is paid for with tax payer money but the tax payers have no say on how it is run. You can’t un-elect a bunch of bankers who are accountable to nobody. The IMF, which is based in Washington DC, still resists calls for it to be open to public scrutiny by an independent body. When a developing country requires IMF assistance (usually needed as a direct result of western economic dominance) it is forced to privatise its utilities and sell them to foreign corporations.

Look at Haiti. ‘Global Exchange’ claim the IMF forced Haiti to open its market to imported, highly subsidized U.S. rice at the same time it prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers. A US corporation called Early Rice now sells nearly 50% of the rice consumed in Haiti. Haitian farmers have been forced off their land to seek work in sweatshops, and people are poorer than ever. I have no reason to doubt this as I have seen evidence of the same thing happening across Africa.

In 2008 Bill Clinton made a speech to the UN in which he criticized the World Bank and IMF for their policies on food and agriculture. At one point he said the following:

“We need the World Bank, the IMF, all the big foundations, and all the governments to admit that, for 30 years, we all blew it, including me when I was President. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade, and we all have to go back to a more responsible and sustainable form of agriculture.”

Also in 2008 a study completed jointly by analysts from Cambridge and Yale claimed that strict conditions on the international loans by the IMF resulted in thousands of deaths in Eastern Europe by tuberculosis as public health care had to be weakened. In the 21 countries to which the IMF had given loans, tuberculosis deaths rose by 16.6%.

I think it is time to restrict the power of the corporations, the IMF and the World Bank etc. We need to get away from the ongoing issues of us and them. I think we need to nationalise our utilities and encourage co-ownership through co-operatives in other areas of industry and retail. It’s time to rebalance the global economy and roll back the laws protecting corporate power. Some people think it’s too late and that we can’t change the course of international finance. They say we can’t do it. I think they are wrong. I say, YES WE CAN.