In this slowing economy, as interest rates pile onerous debt on top of debt, Third World countries are dealing with economic pneumonia, as their debt interest increases and their ability to repay the debt decreases. Historically, Third World countries have been at the mercy of Western monetary policy, including what many call the rapacious banking ideology perpetrated by the “World Bank.” Now, it seems that the tables are turned: what many Third World countries have experienced over the last few decades has now headed to the industrialized nations.
Today’s economic meltdown is far reaching consequences from New York to Zimbabwe, as the most vulnerable economies reel from the tsunami current meandering through the international economic system. Unfortunately, the current crisis isn’t the first lethal injection of economic poison to hit the Third World. As far back as the 1980s, Western economic and monetary policies have had adverse effects on African, Asian and Eastern European nations.
· Extrapolating from UNICEF data, as many as 5,000,000 children and vulnerable adults may have lost their lives in sub-Sharan Africa as a result of the debt crunch since the late 1980s.
· The United Nations fears another 3 million children will die in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa by 2015, the target for the Millenium Development Goals to cut poverty by half.
· Some 11 million children die each year around the world, not just Africa, due to similar conditions of poverty and debt.
· These statistics typically define childeren (sic) as those under the age of five. What about 6, or 7, for example? (Anuk Shah, The Scale of the Debt Crisis, 2005)
Millions have died and continue to die because of monetary policies generated by people from across the globe. Now, it seems that those policies are catching up with the so called “First World”, those industrialized countries who are advanced enough to have manufacturing and finished goods exporting economies.
As Europe, the US and China play ping pong with global debt, the pain that so-called advanced economies are now facing has been pandemic in the Third World for generations. This 10 year old essay delineates the devastation ‘advanced economies’ in the West inflict on less advanced economies in the Third world.
The author notes that the very idea of “debt” is actually a social construct, and is, therefore, more than a simple economic fact.
Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact. Furthermore, as understood long ago, liberalization (sic) of capital flow serves as a powerful weapon against social justice and democracy. Recent policy decisions are choices by the powerful, based on perceived self-interest, not mysterious “economic laws”. Technical devices to alleviate their worst effects were proposed years ago, but have been dismissed by powerful interests that benefit. And the institutions that design the national and global systems are no more exempt from the need to demonstrate their legitimacy than predecessors that have thankfully been dismantled. (Ibid)
Debt, debt service, and debt manipulation have often been used as political tools and economic warfare. Even now, foreclosure-generated land and wealth redistribution has the potential to restructure economies and political systems worldwide. Various incarnations of wealth distribution/economic warfare have been used by emperors, kings and conquerors for thousands of years, and we, in this era, are no exception.
Today, with all of the economic fallout arising out of toxic loans, securitized mortgages and other varieties of economic warfare, the move toward debt collection, foreclosure and wealth distribution are a critical element in destabilizing economies in the US and around the world. Most certainly this redistribution of wealth and restructuring of property value/ownership have the potential to redistribute land, wealth and assets as debtors fall further behind and creditors close in. Even in the United States, as foreclosure fries property values, decreases the value of the tax base, and while the government turns to Chinese money to hold up the economy, states increasingly are turning to privatization of public assets in order to save money, acquire new sources of revenue and lift the burden of road maintenance and public utility operation from the taxpayers.
They’ve been privatizing roads (Indiana), prisons (Indiana, Texas, Florida), municipal utilities, and public service functions in the US and around the world. Citizens are now paying private contractors for services, which their tax dollars and governments built, then sold to “private companies” at fire sale, less than market value prices. From water plants to electric generation facilities, prisons and road building, outsourcing, even downright selling or leasing public facilities to private corporations has become the newest version of high-tech, paper piracy, and is now a nightmare in many countries around the world.
Water resources, in particular, have created wars for centuries. Now, according to research from several policy think tanks, Third World nations with critical level water resources, are increasingly at the mercy of privatization take over efforts. With water scarcity in much of the world, many Third World nations, and even some industrialized nations, are selling off or long term leasing water, road and power generating facilities and government assets in order to raise capital for other projects.
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