- In July 1944, 730 delegates from 44 nations met at the
Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, NH for a UN Monetary and Financial
Conference. Its purpose was to establish a post-war international monetary
system of convertible currencies, fixed exchange rates, free trade, the
US dollar as the world's reserve currency linked to gold, and those of
other nations fixed to the dollar.
-
- It also designed an institutional framework for market-based
capital accumulation to assure newly liberated colonies would pursue capitalist
economic development beneficial to victorious allies, mainly America.
-
- In addition, the IMF and World Bank were established
to integrate developing nations into the Global North-dominated world economy,
using debt entrapment as the way to transfer their wealth to powerful Western
bankers.
-
- The scheme to this day obligates indebted nations to
take new loans to service old ones, assuring rising indebtedness and structural
adjustment harshness, including:
-
- -- privatization of state enterprises;
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- -- mass layoffs;
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- -- deregulation;
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- -- deep social spending cuts;
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- -- wage freezes or cuts;
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- -- unrestricted free market access for western corporations;
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- -- corporate-friendly tax cuts;
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- -- crackdowns on or elimination of trade unionism; and
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- -- harsh repression against those opposing a system incompatible
with social democracy.
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- As a result, since WW II, public wealth shifted to powerful
private hands, widening the gap between super-rich elitists and working
households, a process more intense than ever now, including the amounts.
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- In 1971, the system unraveled when Nixon closed the gold
window, ending the last link between gold, the dollar, and sound money.
Thereafter, currencies floated, competing with each other in a casino-like
environment, manipulated by powerful insiders like Soros, hedge funds,
giant international banks, or governments at times cooperatively with others
in their own mutual self-interest.
-
- Bretton Woods established a post-war international monetary
system, including the IMF and World Bank's original missions:
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- -- the former to establish stable exchange rates linked
to the dollar and bridge temporary payment imbalances; and
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- -- the latter to provide credit to war-torn developing
countries. Both bodies, in fact, proved hugely exploitive, their purpose
to this day.
-
- In his book "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy
of American Empire" and other writings, Michael Hudson explained how
the dollar glut finances US imperialism and corporate interests by:
-
- -- circulating surplus dollars globally to further financial
speculation and corporate takeovers;
-
- -- global central banks "recyl(ing) these dollar
inflows (into) US Treasury bonds to finance the federal US budget deficit;
and most important the military character of the US payments deficit and
the domestic federal budget deficit."
-
- In other words, dollars finance US corporate takeovers,
speculative excesses creating bubbles and global economic crises, as well
as America's reckless spending, militarism, imperial wars, hundreds of
bases worldwide, and overall belligerence and exploitation at the expense
of democratic values and social justice.
-
- Sooner or later, however, excesses erode confidence and
produce change, especially today with the Federal Reserve sacrificing dollar
strength to bail out Wall Street at the expense of productive economic
growth and stability. The greater the dollar erosion, the less likely foreign
investors will tolerate buying bad assets, giving America a free lunch
to finance counterproductive policy.
-
- As a result, Hudson sees international tensions growing
for the next generation because of America's reckless monetarism, perpetual
wars, and extreme wealth gap between super-rich elitists and ordinary workers.
-
- For decades, US companies had a competitive advantage
from Washington Consensus rules and Bretton Woods institutions it controls,
including the IMF and World Bank, affording America a free lunch to rule
by forcing other countries into debt bondage, threatening to bring down
the global monetary system if enough of them balk. And, of course, waging
imperial wars when financial ones don't work.
-
- So far it has because Europe and Asia lack the political
will to establish a new international economic order, so nations producing
economic gains can keep them, not let America usurp them to reinforce its
"new kind of centralized global planning" - one based on financialization
and a US Treasury securities standard, not industrial mechanisms.
-
- In WTO terms, it transfers foreign trade gains from other
economies to America, drains their resources overall, promotes dependency,
not self-sufficiency, and backs it with hardline militarism and threats
of systemic monetary collapse.
-
- Eventually, exploited countries balk about "taxation
without representation," a "quid without quo," a free lunch
from "the world's payments-surplus nations." The longer America
demands it by glutting world economies with dollars, the more likely disadvantaged
nations will object, by threatening to withdraw from the IMF, World Bank
and WTO.
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- It's a possibility globalists like George Soros aim to
exploit, among other ways through Bretton Woods 2.0 to develop ideas and
policies for a new financial world order, elitists like himself control.
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- George Soros - Billionaire Predatory Investor
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- His rogue investing is notorious. For example, in 1992,
he made a billion dollars sabotaging European monetary policy by attacking
the European Rate Mechanism (ERM) through a highly leveraged speculative
assault on the British pound, forcing its devaluation and ERM breakup.
-
- In June 2003, Neil Clark wrote a New Statesman article,
explaining his machinations as a rogue predator. As a result, he "made
billions out of the Eastern currency crash of 1997," and was fined
in 2002 "for insider trading by a court in France." When asked
about the turmoil his speculation caused, he dismissively said:
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- "As a market participant, I don't need to be concerned
with the consequences of my actions."
-
- Earning billions from them, they've caused havoc for
millions globally. More still by his International Crisis Group and Open
Society (open meaning for him to plunder) collaboration with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Al Gore, General Wesley Clark, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and many
other notorious scoundrels and organizations.
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- For decades, Soros operated roguishly for a buck. For
example, in 1998, he wrote an outrageous letter to Bill Clinton, calling
for a "comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing
down Saddam and his regime" for reasons the Bush administration implemented.
-
- He's also connected to the Carlyle Group, profiting on
militarism and wars from defense contracts. There his partners and associates
include Bush I, James Baker, Colin Powell, former UK Prime Minister John
Major, Frank Carlucci, Richard Darman, at one time members of bin Laden
family, and many other well-connected figures.
-
- Clark explained that Soros "may not, as sometimes
suggested, be a fully paid-up CIA agent. But that his corporations and
NGOs are closely wrapped up in US expansionism cannot seriously be doubted."
-
- He turned on Bush II over tactics, not ideology, for
committing the cardinal sin of giving away the game through overzealously
endorsing belligerence.
-
- In fact, Soros strongly supports financial and military
warfare for greater profits globally, to gain control over money, resources
and markets, but wants it done skillfully with little notice - his way.
-
- As a result, he uses his wealth and influence to oust
"bad for business" regimes. For example, Clark said he was instrumental
in the Soviet collapse by:
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- "distribut(ing) $3 million a year to dissidents
including Poland's solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and
Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union. In 1984, he founded his first Open
Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition
movements and independent media. Ostensibly aimed at building up a 'civil
society,' these initiatives were designed to weaken the existing political
structures and pave the way for eastern Europe's eventual exploitation
by global capital."
-
- Soros now takes credit for "Americaniz(ing) eastern
Europe" by exploiting its wealth and people for profit. In Yugoslavia,
Clark said:
-
- "The Yugoslavs remained stubbornly resistant and
repeatedly returned Slobodan Milosevic's reformed Socialist Party to government.
Soros was equal to the challenge. From 1991, his Open Society Institute
channeled more than $100 million to" anti-Milosevic elements, "funding
political parties, publishing houses and 'independent' media" like
Radio B92," using it against Milosevic.
-
- When Washington ousted him in 2000, "all that was
left was to cart (him) to the Hague tribunal, co-financed by Soros"
and other so-called human rights custodians, corporate ones wanting their
share of the booty. Today, Yugoslavia is balkanized, its people exploited,
and Kosovars governed by Hashim Thaci's Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a
rogue organization connected to the CIA and organized crime.
-
- Soros, however, profited hugely. He's done it, in fact,
in each country he targeted at the expense of freedom, democratic values,
and public welfare.
-
- "In Kosovo, for example, he invested $50 million
in an attempt to gain control of the Trepca mine complex, where there are
vast reserves of gold, silver, lead and other minerals estimated to be
worth (about) $5 billion. He thus copied a pattern he (used) to great effect
over the whole of eastern Europe (through) 'shock therapy' and 'economic
reform,' then swooping in with his associates to buy valuable state assets
at knock-down prices."
-
- In fact, his Pax Americana strategy differs only from
Bush II in subtlety. "But it is just as ambitious and just as deadly,"
whether by military or financial warfare for maximum profits.
-
- Soros' Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) Bretton
Woods Conference
-
- From April 8 - 11, INET's second annual conference addressed
global economic crisis aftershocks, as part of a wide-ranging effort to
"engage the larger European Union, as well as the emerging economies
of Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia" to accept Soros' New World
Order ideas.
-
- Aiming to "inspir(e) and provok(e) new economic
thinking," over 200 academics, business and government leaders (many
with direct ties to him) attended, including INET's Soros and Robert Johnson,
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Paul Volker, Larry Summers, Joseph Stiglitz,
Kenneth Rogoff, Jeffrey Sachs (whose shock therapy poison helped wreck
post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe), Carmen Reinhart from the (Pete)
Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Bank of England's Andy
Haldane, Henry Kaufman, and other New World Order elitists, plotting new
ways for global financial control and profits.
-
- Topics discussed included:
-
- -- The emerging economic and political order: what lies
ahead?
-
- -- Bretton Woods: what can we learn from the past in
designing the future?
-
- -- Getting back on track: macroeconomic management after
a financial crisis.
-
- -- Sovereignty and institutional design in the global
age: the global market and the nation states.
-
- -- Can sovereignty and effective international supervision
be reconciled: the challenge of large complex financial institutions.
-
- -- Exploring complexity in economic theory.
-
- -- The political economy of structural adjustment: understanding
the obstacles to cooperation.
-
- -- The market or the state: can market forces deliver
innovation, education, and infrastructure?
-
- -- Sustainable economic.
-
- -- Optimal currency areas and governance: the challenge
of Europe.
-
- -- The architecture of Asia: financial structure and
an emerging economic system, and
-
- -- Rising to the challenge: equity, adjustment and balance
in the world economy.
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- A Final Comment
-
- Globalist Soros believes "America should be replaced
by a world government with a global currency under UN rule."
-
- In other words, he wants national sovereignty replaced
by centralized control over money, populations, resources and markets -
an undemocratic ruler-serf society unfit to live in except for rulers and
profiteers.
-
- On January 25, 2010, New York Times writer Andrew Sorkin
headlined, "Still Needed: A Sheriff of Finance," quoting Soros
saying:
-
- "We need a global sheriff" ahead of the 2008
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Perhaps he has himself in mind.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the
Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays
at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs
are archived for easy listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/
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