Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Debt Relief ("You Are Getting Verrrrry Sleeeepy...")
Sometimes the devil is in the details.0 comments
But, unless you're a major policy wonk like Bill Clinton, details only serve to make your eyes glaze over—making for less dialogue, not more.
This glazing effect makes the perfect cover for those who like to "steal big."
For all of the press coverage of the G8 Summit in Brunswick, GA this week, little actual information will be disseminated.
Despite the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia and Canada joining George W. Bush this week, there will only be broad-brush talk of Iraq and how all of the players are jockeying to maximize their particular piece of the money pie that Bush's administration has heretofore been hoarding.
But as an economic Summit, the weighty issues of the interworkings of world economies will be dealt with in backroom sessions by low-level assistants who actually understand all the minutiae of geopolitical economic realities—usually not the balliwick of the grandstanding photo-op guys at the top.
A profound issue that ranks towards the very top of issues to place at the very bottom of most people's agendas (especially, the media's) is debt relief.
Bush came out yesterday and insisted that Iraq gain full and total debt relief.
While we hold most of Iraq's debt—and are making no particular inroads towards creating relief ourselves—Bush understands that the other Seven governments will press their multi-billion dollar debt claims on Iraq in order to wrest a bigger piece of this turkey whenever it's effectively cut up and parceled out. Bush wants everyone else's debt forgiven so that we have a clear title to the position of head carver.
Fat chance.
Of course, you were sharp enough to notice that there was no mention of the well-being of average Iraqi citizens in any of the above.
From the middle of the 17th Century to today, northern hemishpere countries have happily defined themselves as "Have" countries and southern hemisphere countries as "Have Not" countries.
It's just made everything easier.
That way, when northern countries have squeezed most of the cash out of places below the equator, they can happily say, "Screw 'em" when exploited people have objected and created local uprisings, which could then be harshly dealt with—on their soil.
Plus, these uprisings always presented the opportunity to amass more colonial territory to control and exploit.
But the world has changed, and the reach of the angry has become global.
Beyond Iraq, most of us have no awareness of how debt is creating worldwide tensions that we deal with on an almost daily basis.
We've seen the photos of flies bouncing around the eyes of black and brown babies; eyes made lifeless from malnutrition and lack of water. We're horrified that such poverty exists. But we flip the page, feeling badly, and never ask, "how did that happen; why is that country so poor?"
That's easy.
For close to a century or two, the governments and banks of the "Have" countries have loaned hundreds of billions to poor and emerging countries. During the Cold War, most of those loans went to dictators and local psychopaths who used it to build their own wealth and/or oppress their own people, as long as Western governments were content that this despot was "helping us fight Communism."
And while we're celebrating the storied tenure of Ronald Reagan, you should know that much of this destructive debt flowed during his watch. It multiplied exponentially, actually. Not only did we push the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, we shoved most of the Third World in along with it.
Indeed, "Mr. Gorbachev" tore down "that wall." But they stored all the resulting rubble below the equator.
As for the banks, it was merely a golden opportunity for some old-fashioned predatory lending.
Decades later, with the Soviet empire a memory and many of their despots replaced, these countries are beginning to emerge and are struggling under the weight of these loans.
As for the Western countries, instead of determining that this was political money well spent and writing off the expense, they're now standing on the doorstep of most of the Third World, saying, "where's our money? What do you have to turn into hard currency, to give us our money back?"
Not surprisingly, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and three other bill sponsors, "get it," and this week have introduced the Jubilee Act to restructure and forgive odious international loans.
According to Adam Taylor, the associate minister of Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.:
"African nations continue to spend more on debt service than health care for their citizens. Experts claim that it will take $10 billion a year to fight AIDS, but African nations alone spend almost $15 billion in debt service each year. The G-8 countries have dragged their feet for too long to provide full debt cancellation, at the cost of health and stability for millions of people around the world. While not a panacea, without debt cancellation countries will be unable to use their own resources to invest in vital health and human services. Decisive action on debt will move the G-8 from lip service around addressing crushing poverty to effective action that will build right relationships between nations, the true vision of Jubilee."
Here are some sobering international debt figures, courtesy of the 50 Years Is Enough Network site:
* The external debt burden of sub-Saharan Africa has increased by nearly 400% since 1980, when the IMF and World Bank began imposing their SAPs. For the developing countries as a whole between 1980 and 1992, the external debt burden doubled.
* The flow of money between the North and South was reversed some time ago; developing countries now pay more in debt servicing than they get in new credit. Between 1982 and 1990, the South transferred a net $418 billion to the North. Between 1987 and 1995 the IMF received $4 billion more in debt repayments from the most indebted and impoverished countries than it has provided.
* Africa spends four times more on debt interest payments than on health care. In the mid-1990s, Uganda spent $3 on health for every $17 it paid in debt service, most of which went to multilateral lending institutions.
* In the early 1990s, 75% of the U.S.’s Agency for International Development (USAID) budget for Nicaragua went toward paying interest on the national debt and improving balance of trade figures. Nicaragua took in $631 million in "liquid resources" in 1994; over 70% of that money went toward paying the interest on the country’s foreign debt.
* Between 1990 and 1993 the government of Zambia spent $37 million on primary school education. Over the same period, it spent $1.3 billion on debt repayments. Repayments to the IMF alone were equivalent to ten times government spending on primary education.
* Of $2.9 billion provided by the World Bank’s soft-loan arm, the International Development Association (IDA), to the world’s poorest countries, fully two-thirds ($1.9 billion) was spent on repaying past World Bank loans. A good bit of the remaining third went to the IMF.
* External debt per capita for sub-Saharan Africa (not including South Africa) is $365, while GNP per capita is just $308.
* The external debt for the region (again excluding South Africa), at some $203 billion in 1996, represents 313% of the annual value of its exports.
* Debt servicing for sub-Saharan Africa amounts to about 20% of its annual export income—that is, everything the region earns from those goods it is able to sell for hard currency (dollars, marks, yen, etc.).
* In 1996, sub-Saharan Africa (minus South Africa) paid $2.5 billion more in debt servicing than it got in new long-term loans and credits.
We, of course, can immediately see some key points that will impact us directly here in our cities and small towns for decades to come:
- Conservatives answer all this by declaring that "these people are ungrateful" for all we've done for them, and that they just can't understand why these ignorant savages are so damn uppity. Now, you'll know that these rascist voices are only making matters worse and are simply paddling our raft over the falls as fast as they can.
- Much of worldwide poverty is institutionalized. There's just too much profit to spread around to lift the yoke from these countries.
- The citizens of these countries are not stupid. They know full well the cause of their lot. And they are increasingly angry about it. And increasingly, we will be the recipients of that anger. No, when that anger boils over, it's not going to be pretty.
- It's a no-brainer to see why the CIA reports that it's most worried about sub-Sahara Africa, Asia and South America as the next fertile soil for al Qaeda-type organizations.
- Spending your life watching Western-backed dictators drive by in Mercedes while you watch your family perish from lack of food and clean water will bring the primal urge of an eye-for-an-eye home to you in a very real, visceral way.
So, please, don't be surprised or shocked or angry when these people point their hatred towards the U.S. and the other countries at the G8 Summit.
And, please, spare us the question: "Why do they hate us so?"
Remember, the Devil loves the details.
posted by Gotham 10:48 AM
0 Comments:
