🚀 go-pugleaf

(Boudewijn submits to the Wendell Solomons' worldcity list.)
--------------------
Boudewijn Wegerif, along with Michael Chossudovsky and Herman Daly, is known
around the world as a humanitarian exposer of the criminality and extreme
caustic anti-social economic and political conduct of the finance-capitalism
globalism and that international monetary system designed specifically so
that deviant elite can fleece and milk the rest of humanity like work
animals on their global plantation (which we have already become.).  The
impact of these thinkers has been profound.  (How I aspire to be D'Artagnan
to these anti-globalist Three Musketeers!)

Here are two editions of Wegerif's monetary policy newsletter, Money Matters
(NOT about investing -- that type, please go away -- it is about monetary
and political reforms that will set mankind free, as we once thought we were
free.).
Dick Eastman
Yakima
Every man is responsible to every other man
====^=========================
Money Matters-- 13 July 2001    (2,800 words)
Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs

* * * * * * * *
Dear list member,
I have been reading Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs (Vintage
paperback, 1985) - a great book; surely a classic; with this important
message: Wealth creation happens in innovative cities and their hinterlands.
Nation states, and more grotesquely regional blocs like the EU and NAFTA,
are political entities in which wealth creation is distorted and undone -
the economic distortions being short-term to serve the ambitions of a power
elite.

This message comes through clearly in Jane Jacobs' book, with concrete
examples of success and failure from right round the globe, interspersed
with pearls of wisdom. (excerpts below)

Thus, on page 39: "Economic life develops by grace of innovating; it expands
by grace of import-replacing. These two master economic processes are
closely related, both being functions of city economics." And on page 41:
"Any settlement that becomes good at import-replacing becomes a city."

Below are further excerpts, ending with a crucial question for economic and
monetary reform. Will we see the emergence of free city economies as nation
states and the regional blocs collapse?

There is not enough in the excerpts for an answer. I have given titbits from
the meal, not the meal itself. My aim is to excite (or aggravate) you into
buying the book, as food for thought leading to an informed answer to the
critical question.

In friendship,

Boudewijn Wegerif,
Monetary Studies Programme
Box 83, 669 22 Deje, Sweden
Tel: +46.552.10327

The Monetary Studies Programme prepares commentaries and study material on
the psychology and history of money. Through the Money Matters mailing list,
information is spread about monetary reform and the growing movement for a
positive economic future, freed from debt oppression and money making for
its own sake ..., and works closely with the members' owned, interest-free
bank JAK (www.jak.se).

Excerpts from
CITIES AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Jane Jacobs (Vintage Books, 1985):

FROM CHAPTER ONE, FOOL'S PARADISE
Page 6: Macro-economics - large-scale economics - is the branch of learning
entrusted with the theory and practice of understanding and fostering
national and international economies. It is a shambles.

Pages 27/28: We do not understand how to catalyse development in backward
economies, and we do not understand how to prevent developed economies from
sliding into backwardness themselves: two sides of the same mystery.
   One thing we do know by now because events have rubbed our faces in it:
it would be rash to suppose that macro-economics, as it stands today, has
useful guidance for us. Several centuries of hard, ingenious thought about
supply and demand chasing each other around, tails in their mouths, have
told us almost nothing about the rise and decline of wealth. We must find
more realistic and fruitful lines of observation and thought than we have
tried to use so far. Choosing among the existing schools of thought is
bootless. We are on our own.

FROM CHAPTER TWO, BACK TO REALITY
Pages 29-31: . . . we must be suspicious that some basic assumption or other
is in error, most likely an assumption so much taken for granted that it
escapes identification and skepticism.
   Macro-economic theory does contain such an assumption. It is the idea
that national economies are useful entities for understanding how economic
life works and what its structure may be: that national economies and not
some other entity provide the fundamental data for marco-economic analysis.
The assumption is about four centuries old, coming down to us from the early
mercantile economists . . .
   According to the theory they propounded, wealth consists of gold, and
gold is amassed as a nation manages to sell more goods than it buys (hence
the designation 'mercantilist' for this thinking), in the process piling up
national treasure . . .
   In due course Adam Smith, in his great work of 1776, An Enquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, redefined wealth as production
(supply) for purposes of consumption (demand) and sought its source not in
mines of gold or silver but in capital and labor, and in domestic trade as
well as in foreign or imperial trade . . .

   But Smith failed to question everything that came to him ready-made. For
example, he accepted without comment the mercantilist tautology that nations
are the salient entities for understanding the structure of economic life.
As far as one can tell from his writings, he gave that point no thought but
took it so much for granted that he used it as his point of departure . . .
   In the two centuries since Smith published, most of what he wrote has
been questioned and much has been amplified, elaborated and modified. But
the one thing not questioned has been the same idea Smith himself failed to
question: the old mercantilist tautology that nations are the salient
entities for understanding the structure of economic life. Ever since, that
same notion has continued to be taken for granted.

Page 32: Once we remove the blinders of the mercantilist tautology and try
looking at the real economic world in its own right rather than as a
dependent artifact of politics, we can't avoid seeing that most nations are
composed of collections of grab bags of very different economies, rich ones
and poor ones within the same nation.

   We can't avoid seeing, too, that among all the various types of
economies, cities are unique in their ability to shape and reshape the
economies of other settlements, including those far removed from them
geographically.

Page 35: Distinctions between city economies and the potpourris we call
national economies are important not only for getting a grip on realities;
they are of the essence where practical attempts to reshape economic life
are concerned. For example, failures to make such distinctions are directly
responsible for many wildly expensive economic debacles in backward
countries, debacles which have resulted from the failure to observe that the
all-important function of import-replacing and import-substitution is in
real life a specifically city function, rather than something a "national
economy" can be made to do.

Page 38: Cities that replace imports significantly replace not only finished
goods but, concurrently, many, many items of producers' goods and services.
They do it in swiftly emerging, logical chains. For example, first comes the
local processing of fruit preserves that were formerly imported, then the
production of jars or wrappings formerly imported for which there was no
local market of producers until the first step had been taken . . . When
Tokyo went into the bicycle business, first came repair work cannibalizing
imported bicycles, then manufacture of some of the parts most in demand for
repair work, then manufacture of still more parts, finally assembly of the
whole, Tokyo-made bicycles. And almost as soon as Tokyo began exporting
bicycles to other Japanese cities, there arose in some of those customer
cities much the same process of replacing bicycles imported from Tokyo,
rather than from abroad, as had happened with many items sent from city to
city in the United States.

Page 39: Import-replacing is now, as it always has been, a city process for
good practical reasons. In the first place, the replacement of former
imports is impossible to achieve economically, skillfully and flexibly -
meaning in ways suitable to the time and place - except in a settlement that
is already versatile enough at production to possess the necessary
foundation for the new and added production work. Cities can build up that
kind of versatility, often very rapidly, in part as a result of their
already existing export work (if it is reasonably diversified), in part as a
result of their previous simpler achievements in import-replacing, and in
part through the complex symbiotic relationships formed among their various
producers. In the second place, city markets - whether of consumers or
producers - are at once diverse and concentrated. These two qualities of the
local market make production of many kinds of goods and services
economically feasible that would not be feasible in rural places, company
towns or little market towns, and most especially so at the time production
of former imports is just starting up and getting a first foothold in its
markets.

Pages 42/43: It is important, if we are to understand the rise and decline
of wealth, for us not to be fuzzy about an abstraction like "expansion" but
to be concrete and specific about how expansion occurs and of what it
consists. The expansion that derives from city import-replacing consists
specifically of these five forms of growth: abruptly enlarged city markets
for new and different kinds of imports consisting largely of rural goods and
of innovations being produced in other cities; abruptly increased numbers
and kinds of jobs in the import-replacing city; increased transplants of
city work into non-urban locations as older enterprises are crowded out; new
uses for technology, particularly to increase rural production and
productivity; and growth of city capital.
   These five great forces exert far-reaching effects outside of
import-replacing cities as well as within them, ultimately rippling out even
to the remotest places . . .
   A city economy which does not or cannot replace domestic imports with its
own production is feeble at best, and helpless at worst, when it comes to
replacing foreign imports.

Pages 43/44:   Another unfortunate consequence of preoccupation with
national economies is that development experts do not think of
import-replacing as the city process it is.
   Thinking of it instead as a national process, they often advocate that
already completely developed factories (producing foreign imports, of
course) be set down arbitrarily any place - in little towns, in the
countryside, usually wherever jobs are badly needed. All this, although it
goes under the name of import-replacing or import substitution, is remote
from the realities of where and how the feat of replacing imports is
successfully pulled off in the real world: so remote from the realities that
such schemes can, and indeed have, bankrupted countries instead of helping
them to prosper. Such are the practical penalties - that fall indirectly
upon us all - when well-intentioned and learned people commit such a mild
little sin as taking for granted old and unexamined assumptions like the
mercantile tautology that nations are salient entities for understanding
economic life.

FROM CHAPTER THREE, CITIES OWN REGIONS
Page 47: To see what happens when all the (five above) forces are brought to
bear upon the city's own hinterland or region, let us look at one Japanese
hamlet which formerly was outside the Tokyo city region. (From here Jane
Jacobs goes on to describe the transformations within a village that came to
be absorbed by Tokyo, and which is given the name Shinohata.)

Page 49: The fates that befall traditional rural settlements tend to be drab
and dispiriting when only one or another of the great city forces impinges
upon them. Changing markets might well have meant worse poverty for
Shinohata if the changes only meant declining demand for its traditional
cash crops, as indeed markets for silk cocoons have declined. The pull of
distant city jobs might simply have depopulated it . . . A heavy influx if
city technology to save farm labor, taken only by itself, might have left
most of its people idle. A single transplanted city factory might have made
Shinohata a company town. Or it might have come mainly to live on outside
earnings, either earnings sent back home by sons, daughters or husbands who
had left, or welfare subsidies of some sort.
   In the event, however, Shinohata's fate after 1955 was radically
different from any of these and from its own past as well. The moment
Tokyo's expanding city region reached out to embrace Shinohata, all five
forces of expansion came to bear on it, each force interplaying with the
others.

FROM CHAPTER FOUR, SUPPLY REGIONS
Page 59: (Supply regions) are disproportionately shaped by the markets of
distant cities. (They) are often poor, and thus the stultification of their
economies is often attributed to their poverty, but a rich supply region is
as stunted and stultified as a poor one. The shortcomings of these regions
go deeper than poverty. Indeed, sooner or later the shortcomings compel
poverty.
   Uruguay, as an example, was an unusually rich supply region for several
generations. (Things began to go wrong for once rich Uruguay from about
1953.)

Page 71: The second flaw of the efficiency argument is that supply regions
are not efficient in any case. That is why they are commonly so poor or else
are subsidised. To be sure, their specialities are sometimes (not always)
efficiently produced. But this is not the same as saying these economies are
efficient. An economy that contains few different sorts of niches for
people's differing skills, interests and imaginatiuons is not efficient. An
economy that is unresourceful and unadaptable is not efficient. An economy
that can fill few of the needs of its own people and producers is not
efficient. To say that Uruguay, "the Switzerland of South America", was more
efficient because more specialized than the economy of Switzerland is to
stand reality on its head.

FROM CHAPTER TWELVE, TRANSACTIONS OF DECLINE
Page 193: The trouble with transfer payments and other subsidies as means of
keeping economic life chugging away is that, feeding voraciously upon city
earnings as they do, they reduce intercity trade in favor of trade between
cities and inert economies; divert earned city imports to economies that
cannot replace imports; and reduce cities' abilities to serve as good
customers for one another's innovations. Subsidies milked from cities are
for these reasons profoundly antidevelopment transactions.

FROM CHAPTER THIRTEEN, THE PREDICAMENT
Page 205: To be sure, people in northern and southern Japan are far better
off economically than they were in the past. Nevertheless, these are poor
economies relative to those of central Japan and have persisted in remaining
so. Their troubled officials note that in some mysterious way development
has passed them by.
   So it has. The solution, of course, would be the emergence of
import-replacing cities in these regions too. But this hasn't happened, and
as time passes it becomes increasingly unlikely that it will. By now,
potential import-replacing cities in the stunted regions would need tariffs
or their equivalent on products from the larger and more developed cities in
central Japan, such as the cities of central Japan themselves once required
tariffs to set them going on replacing imports from the then more highly
developed cities of America and Europe.

Pages 214 - 216: Is there any kind of radical intervention of discontinuity
other than transactions of decline to which nations might resort, to contend
with their inexorable, built-in cumulative instabilities? Theoretically
there may be another way out, but only theoretically . . .
   The radical discontinuity would thus be division of the single
sovereignty into a family of smaller sovereignties, not after things had
reached a stage of breakdown and disintegration, but long before while
things were still going reasonably well . . . In this utopian fantasy, young
sovereignties splitting off from the parent nations would be told, in
effect, "Good luck to you independence! . . . We won't discriminate against
you in our trade, and if you should need to raise tariff barriers against
our manufactured goods to get a start, we will put up with it without
rancour."
   A chief advantage, although not the only one, of this unlikely national
behavior would be multiplication of currencies. The technical difficulties
and inconveniences that would entail are surmountable, increasingly so with
the aid of computers, instantaneous communication systems and such devices
as credit cards which - even in their current rudimentary and limited uses
(Jane Jacobs was writing in the early 1980s) - are already convenient for
simultaneous transactions involving diverse currencies . . .
   The difficulty, rather, is precisely that multiplicities of currencies
imply multiplicity of sovereignties - indeed, would only be cosmetic
currencies otherwise, like the Scottish pound, which is the English pound
with different pictures. Thus the type of discontinuity as an alternative to
transactions of decline would be at the expense of the unified nation . . .
   With almost no exceptions, our current nations came into being in the
first place through bloody military force. Most have been held together from
time to time by bloodshed. Many are still held together so . . .
   The mystique of the nation is the powerful, gruesome glamour of human
sacrifice. To betray the nation is to betray all that shed blood: to do so
to be better off economically would seem to render the most glorious pages
of national history mere sound and fury. Virtually all national governments,
it seems fair to say, and most citizens would sooner decline and decay
unified, true to the sacrifices by which their unity was won, than prosper
and develop in division. Even separatists, when they manage to gain
sovereignties of their own, bitterly resist any further division; perhaps
sovereignties with a separatist history most of all. That is why my
suggested alternative to transactions of decline is theoretical only.

(OR IS IT?)
=====^================
* * * * * * * * *
Dear list member,
I will be away, in England mainly, till early August - so there will be no
Money Matters postings in the coming weeks.

Some of you may have noticed that I am no longer sending postings on current
affairs that have no direct relevance to money matters. I am having to
focus. This is hard because almost every day something comes through that I
feel impelled to forward. This relates particularly to the information I
receive from Robert Rodvick (Robrod@uniserve.com) on the war that is now
inevitable in the Middle East. The Jew in me is appalled at what is being
done to the Palestinians, and grateful to the few Israeli voices that are
speaking out strongly against it.

On Monday, 9 July, Robert sent this from Gideon Levy: "What would happen if
the Palestinian cabinet were to meet and afterward press reports spoke of
the existence of a list of 26 to 30 senior officers of the Israeli Defence
Force (IDF) who were being targeted for liquidation? . . . What would happen
is that Israel would stir up a tremendous world-wide fuss. We would brand
that cabinet a 'regime of terror' - and rightly so. In the middle of last
week (Israel) decided to extend 'the strikes against Palestinian terror
activists'. The decision was made public, as was the list of between 26 and
30 names of people who are targeted for liquidation . . . Admitting to
carrying out liquidations and their transformation into official policy are
another stage in Israel's moral deterioration."

And on Wednesday Robert sent news items from the Middle East about Iranian
troops targeting rockets on Israel from positions in southern Lebanon; and
about Syria and Israel being on a 'warpath'.

Now today I hear from friends at the Shiller Institute's Stockholm office
(si@nysol.se --
http://www.larouchepub.com) that the Institute has reliable insider
information that Ariel Sharon came to power with a war plan to use Hamas as
a tool for destabilizing Jordan, ultimately overthrowing King Abdullah II
and establishing Jordan as a 'Palestinian homeland' under Hamas control. "To
this end, Sharon, who was instrumental in the launching of the Hamas
movement earlier in his career, has dispatched his son as a personal
back-channel emissary to the Islamist group. Key Hamas personnel have
already been infiltrated into Jordan, in preparation for Sharon's
provocation of a new general Mideast war--in the days or weeks ahead, the
sources said."

If there is something to this, I am sure that news of it will be coming
through from Robert Rodvick in due course. For those of you who want to be
kept well informed on developments in the Middle East, the Balkans and
elsewhere where the beasts of war are flexing their arms, I strongly
recommend you ask Robert Rodvick to be included on his mailing list.

I also strongly recommend Jean Hudon's Earth Rainbow Network for balanced
information on trouble spots, black ops, genetic manipulation, and, yes,
positive developments, too. You can write to Jean at
globalvisionary@cybernaute.com.

With those recommendations on record, I feel easier about focusing on Money
Matters in future. The list is growing. You are one of now 286 subscribers.
Sometime soon I will start a Money Matters e-group through Yahoo, with a
linked web-site. It is a pleasure developing the service, for so long as the
feedback I receive suggests that it is wanted.

And BTW, I do have one other list, my HUMOUR list, for sending good quotes
and jokes to about fifty family and friends, once a week or fortnight or so.
If you want to be on that list, too, let me know. So long as we are still
able to laugh, there is still hope for the world.

Yesterday afternoon I spent four hours in a sweat lodge, at the Agnsbacka
Summer Festival in Molkom nearby, where I have given talks on the psychology
of money. In preparing us for the sweat lodge, the facilitator from New
Mexico spoke about how we repress not only anger, but, in fact, more
strenuously, joy, prayer, praise and the thank yous to life. "Once anger is
out in the open it is easy to hold on to it for days into weeks," he said.
"Yet how difficult we find it to stay with joy when that breaks through the
barriers."

Quite a thought, which I am pleased to pass on.


In friendship,

Boudewijn Wegerif
Monetary Studies Programme
Box 83, 669 22 Deje, Sweden
Tel: +46.552.10327

This case study deals with the dilemma
of a country that was one of the first to bear
the full force of medicine prescribed by the
ruling school of economics.

At the moment it feels like being in an aquarium
from which oxygen is being extracted. First the
fishes float to the surface, then with more oxygen
depletion, the mind stops functioning normally.

Sri Lanka is a small country and therefore balance
can be restored if its case receives publicity.

Best wishes,

--wendell


BEYOND FRACTURED MARKET IN SRI LANKA

---------------------------

Seven quotes from business
leader Hemaka Amarasuriya
and commentary

---------------------------

Commentary by Wendell W. Solomons
July 2001; 2,100 words; email:solomons@slt.lk


TV often shows up the brand name 'SINGER' emblazoned on
the clothes of Sri Lanka's world class cricket teams.

The regional head of Singer is Hemaka Amarasuriya and his
picture appears on the July 2001 cover of 'Lanka Monthly
Digest.' The cover also bears the caption of its interview
with Amarasuriya -- A FRACTURED ECONOMY.

The magazine interviews Hemaka Amarasuriya because he
is among figures looked up to by the business sector.

In the interview, Amarasuriya makes careful assertions.
In response to questions from the interviewer, he does
not -- for instance -- choose to walk to the battle of
public versus private sector along the gangplank laid
out in the textbook.

(1) Amarasuriya states instead:

   "If the government is doing a good job, it need
   not move out. We cannot have a general principle which
   says privatise everything. The private sector has its
   inefficiencies, even corruption, so one should not point
   a finger at the public sector alone."

Amarasuriya speaks from career, hands-on, private sector
experience.

(2) In response to the interviewer's question on socially
responsible business, Amarasuriya says:

   "I'm afraid that most businessmen always look at
   some comparative advantage that might accrue to
   them. They are basically selfish and look to some
   comparative advantage."

Interviewer Sumadhu Weerawarna pointedly asks whether
Amarasuriya perceives the business community coming
forward as a pressure group to influence politicians.

Amarasuriya restates:

   "Not at all. They are generally bent on their own
   selfish interests. And that's the truth."

-------------Italicised researcher comment ---------------

After all, in using the name 'private' sector we
predefine that the interests concerned are private.
Though macabre, in a true life context it is possi-ble
for a mind bent on putting sand in the gears to push
individual interests into misapprehension, civil war or
riot.

It is in the garb of cheerleader and friend to the private
sector that social engineer Milton Friedman (facultative
leader since 1976) charges every government school as being
socialist. He asks for blanket privatisation of all such
schools. He casts a large image on the world with shadow
boxing.

His 30-year influence on World Bank and IMF policy
began in particular with the TV movie, "Free to Choose."
He promised freedom. He called for privatisation not merely
as old nostrum -- but as we have witnessed in practice, as
driving mania. His puffery 'for the private sector' sows
the seeds of destructive moral of dog-eat-dog anarchism and
social vivisection in World Bank and IMF targeted countries.

One of Friedman's many technocrat followers, World Bank Chief
Economist Lawrence Summers (elevated to U.S. Secretary of State
in the Clinton administration,) comes out against any public
and private sector cooperation.

However, such coordination is commonplace in the U.S. though not
often featured on mogul-owned network TV. It is not transparent.
It is executed every day through expensive professional lobbyists
in Washington D.C. paid by business corporations to make
Congressmen and Senators mind company interests.

As a result of such interventions, U.S. manufacturing historically
lost ground to energy-sparing Germany and Japan. The latter two
countries owe their recent, spectacular economic growth to more
transparent than U.S. public-private sector co-determination.

Their methods of cooperation have been copiously documented by
numerous books and newsmagazines. "The Search for Excellence"
authored by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman rose to best-seller
rank and promoted Japanese practices to U.S. managers. The
U.S. Malcolm Baldridge award for quality in industry attempts
to emulate Japanese systems.

The literature has evaded single-minded people like the former
World Bank Chief Economist who hammer out policy for developing
and reconstructing economies. For Russia the latter tabooed
co-determination in development. His words of disparagement came
out in VOA editorial of April 9, 1998, entitled "RUSSIA SHOULD
AVOID ASIAN MODEL." There, Dr Summers decidedly cautions:

   '...Russia against the model some Asian States have followed.
   That model favors the centralized coordination of economic
   activity over decentralized market incentives. It also
   involves Government targeting of particular industries.
   The result has been what some call "crony capitalism." '

-----------------------------------------------------------

The idea that Amarasuriya advances is transparent co-ordination
of goals as in the case of the successful German and Japanese
models.

(3) Amarasuriya suggests one method of cooperation via a
think-tank comprising senior businessmen. Amarasuriya adds:

   "There must be an ongoing dialogue between the state
   apparatus and the think-tank".

(4) As far as division of duties in the two sectors is concerned,
Amarasuriya does not propose an all-government orientation but
clearly defines the following in Sri Lanka's context:

   "My formula would be to shrink the public sector
   as much as possible and advance the private
   sector. But there are key sectors that the public
   sector should control. I, for one, believe that
   utilities should be in the hands of the public
   sector for some more time."

(5) For developing new economic and industrial activity,
Amarasuriya suggests investing:

   "...more in research and development, and marketing.
   These are the areas we are traditionally weak in. We
   must also have greater confidence and belief in ourselves,
   and our natural and inherent talents. As businessmen we
   are very strong within the country but do not want to
   venture into exports. Everybody can produce generic
   products but if we can produce niche products which
   would be able to enter into a specialised but smaller
   segment of the market -- this would be lucrative."

Restoring 'confidence and belief in ourselves' is an important
behest. It proposes setting aside the demonising of society,
that the Friedman model has bequeathed to Sri Lanka. Machiavelli
plagiarist Thomas Hobbes -- an older ideologue of social hatred --
called society a war of each against the other. Sri Lanka is the
first country (commencing in 1977) where Friedman's work has been
thoroughly field tested to prove Friedman a prince of disorder, a
prince of the disruption of cooperation, a prince of social
misapprehension and bickering, a prince of the disruption of civil
society (deeper elaboration of this theme is available in the Ayn
Rand text at www.geocities.com/athens/7842/wcindex.htm.)

(6) Desk officers of the IMF are ingrained pupils of Friedman.
Amarasuriya registers the following complaint, which deals mainly
with the web of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on which every life,
young or old, is now stuck:

   "I think the government is hooked on a failed
   International Monetary Fund (IMF) strategy of
   indirect taxes, which has been a disaster
   world-wide."

(7) Amarasuriya also says:

   "I feel we have got lost in a political quagmire,
   which has taken the country backwards. What I suggest
   is that we start out as if the country was born today,
   and go on from that point."

-------------Italicised researcher comment ---------------

To read deeply into the interview suggests that business
leaders like Amarasuriya perceive a need to sweep clear
from deck the 25-year model imposed by loan salesmen on the
World Bank and IMF for 'structural adjustment' of emergent
nations. As President Lincoln pointed out, "You can't fool
all the people all the time." At some point in time, men in
business will discover that current 'structural adjustment'
is tuned to invoke in countries a quagmire of debt.

In Milton Friedman's mind there has been no question as to whom
the IMF serves. Two decades after perception control with his
"Free to Choose" movie, he confessed in a live CNN interview
in August 1998:

   "We speak about the IMF bailing out ... Thailand; the IMF
   isn't bailing out Thailand. It isn't bailing out the poor
   people in Thailand now suffering from the recession they're
   in. It's bailing out the bankers in New York and in London,
   and Berlin who made loans to Thailand."

A fractured economy is one that must ask for loans and pay
interest to bankers who are already rich. It has no other
purpose in the day books of the world's old money houses.

Here now is an excerpt from the University of Ottawa's
Dr. Michel Chossudovsky.

   'More importantly, the banks and speculators
   want access to the details of IMF negotiations with
   member governments which will enable them to
   carefully position their assaults in financial
   markets both prior and in the wake of an IMF
   bailout agreement ...

   'The world's largest banks and brokerage houses
   are both creditors and institutional speculators.
   In the present context, they contribute (through
   their speculative assaults) to destabilizing
   national currencies thereby boosting the volume of
   dollar denominated debts. They then reappear as
   creditors with a view to collecting these debts.

   'Finally, they are called in as "policy advisors"
   or consultants in the IMF-World Bank sponsored
   "bankruptcy programs" of which they are the
   ultimate beneficiaries.

   'In Indonesia, for instance, amidst street rioting
   and in the wake of Suharto's resignation, the
   privatization of key sectors of the Indonesian
   economy ordered by the IMF was entrusted to eight
   of the World's largest merchant banks including
   Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse-First Boston,
   Goldman Sachs and UBS/SBC Warburg Dillon Read.

   'The World's largest money managers set countries
   on fire and are then called in as firemen (under
   the IMF "rescue plan") to extinguish the blaze." '

For Wall Street, Dr Chossudovsky clarifies that the "Big Six"
COMMERCIAL banks include Chase Manhattan, Bank America,
Citicorp and J. P. Morgan.

Wall Street's "Big Five" MERCHANT banks include Goldman-Sachs,
Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney.

The above institutions are often treated as a single finance-capital
cartel for they are seen to divide markets and act in unison. A table
with twelve chairs will seat the heads of all.

Such a unity of finance capital can only be countervailed in the
ultimate by an equivalent balancing force. In the absence of a
balancing force, Milton Friedman permits himself to laughingly run
with the fox and hunt with the hounds. In the 'Wall Street Journal'
of October 13, 1998, he continues to jibe (though ill-fatedly at the
expense of his own disciples, career officers at the World Bank and
IMF):

   "The present crisis is not the result of market
   failure. Rather, it is the result of governments
   intervening in or seeking to supersede the market,
   both internally via loans, subsidies, or taxes and
   other handicaps, and externally via the IMF, the
   World Bank and other international agencies. We do
   not need more powerful government agencies
   spending still more of the taxpayers' money, with
   limited or nonexistent accountability. That would
   simply be throwing good money after bad. We need
   government, both within the nations and
   internationally, to get out of the way and let the
   market work. The more that people spend or lend
   their own money, and the less they spend or lend
   taxpayer money, the better."

There is an attempt to claim that the Unseen Hand that guides
the markets is -- competition. Another person, New York Times
journalist Thomas Friedman on March 29, 1999, reveals other
aspects  of this "desired" Unseen Hand:

   "For globalization to work, America can't be
   afraid to act like the almighty superpower that
   it is...The hidden hand of the market will never
   work without the hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot
   flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer
   of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the
   world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is
   called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine
   Corps."

None of the business establishments above are allowed
to pose a threat to the hidden fist of finance capital
control. Microsoft, prime suppler of Silicon Valley's
software, is being examined by U.S. courts under
anti-trust legislation for its software platform can
merge with and interlope on bank software.

The round table of global financial control has, however,
evaded investigation by anti-trust court or tribunal.
Such investigations might reveal that a veritable
fist-full of players are seated at the table because
wires lead out of Wall Street managing agency boardrooms
outwards to old, traditional money houses such as:

 (1) Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin;
 (2) Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris;
 (3) Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy;
 (4) Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam;
 (5) Kuhn, Loeb Bank of New York.

The last named entity is controlled by the descendants
of Rabbi Schiff who lived with the Warburgs and Rothschilds
in the same large house in Frankfurt-on-the-Maine in the
18th Century. These house residents enjoyed the confidence
of the previously established Openheimer money clan.

If the clans seemed to have maintained the status of a
perennial, creeping vine between centuries, to that has
contributed first-cousin marriage and other blood
practices, some of which are proscribed to the West's
citizens. Finally, in social terms we may be speaking
of a handful of clans with more leverage than in
pharaonic Egypt because this is a world of 6 billion
people -- PROVIDED clan leverage is kept a hidden fist
by mogul perception control via global TV programming.

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