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Racist evil country fukk em’
Argentina Bailout: $50 Billion Loan, Biggest in IMF History
- Thread starter EdJo
- Start date
yes obama is just like trump domestically.Paul Sliker: As you mentioned earlier, it’s just amazing that for the IMF, the term “never again another Argentina” became its motto many years ago, and was actually cited by the European Desk economists who walked out when the IMF made its awful loan to Greece. The IMF acknowledged that Argentina’s debt was not payable. So to be a bit more clear about what you think is going to happen this time around with this massive $50 billion loan agreement, is it simply going to bail out speculators in Argentine bonds?
Michael Hudson: Not only speculators, but the domestic oligarchy of bondholders, landowners and corporate owners. The wealthy Argentinans who deal with foreign banks want to keep their money offshore, in currencies other than the peso. They realize that the game is over and that it’s time to take the money and run.
Paul Sliker: Just to be really clear here in comparison to the 2001-2002 situation, what is this going to do specifically to the Argentinian people as a whole this time around?
Michael Hudson: The same thing that it’s done to the Greek people and the Puerto Rican people. Many will try to emigrate. Some will commit suicide. Lifespans will shorten.
The standard scenario is what happened to Russia under neoliberalism in the 1990s. There is little the Argentine people can do, because the President essentially works for the U.S. commercial banking system and has let the IMF put pressure on Argentina. He has stopped the domestic subsidies for gasoline and the price of oil and gas to domestic producers. Basically he’s taking away social subsidies in general. It’s a classic neoliberal austerity program.
Argentina is following the Donald Trump program of balancing the budget by cutting back its social programs. So the reason that Argentina should be interesting to your audience is that it looks like the future of the U.S. What is happening to Argentina is what Donald Trump – and before him, President Obama – want to do to the U.S. economy.
Paul Sliker: That’s the question I was just going to ask you. As we’re closing this conversation out, Michael, maybe you can expand on that. I think some people generally know that the central theme of Latin America for decades is that U.S. economic and foreign policy deploys the IMF and World Bank to back creditors, foreign investment, and privatization. But why exactly should people care here in the U.S.? I know you started to explain that. But dig a little deeper for us there.
Michael Hudson: What really is at issue is whether all debts should be paid, or not? I think that there should be an international rule that no country should be obliged to pay its debts to the wealthy One Percent, especially to a creditor class that prefers to hold its domestic wealth offshore in foreign currencies. No country should be obliged to pay its bondholders if the price of paying means austerity, unemployment, shrinking population, emigration, rising suicide rates, abolition of public health standards, and selloffs of the public domain to monopolists. To make matters even worse, the privatizations demanded by the IMF and World Bank, for instance, will sharply raise the prices for what had been public services, transportation, water and sewer, communications, and telephones.
There should be principle that the domestic people should come before foreigners. But the guiding principle of the IMF, World Bank, and the United States is the opposite: namely, that no nation should put its own interests first. Instead, every nation is told to put the interests of international creditors first, even when the cost is impoverishment, dependency, mass poverty and deindustrialization. This is what globalization really means today. It’s an international imposition of class war by the creditor One Percent against labor and the indebted 99 Percent and their governments.
The madness of this was spelled out over 2000 years ago. In Book I of Plato’s Republic you have Socrates arguing against the idea that all debts should be paid. He asks, what if you borrow a weapon from a crazy person, and he asks for it back. Should you give him a weapon if he’s likely to hurt people?
This applies to creditors in general: Should you pay off debts if the creditors are going to use their money to impoverish society and reduce people to debt dependency? That’s what the Republic is all about. We’re still dealing today twenty four hundred years later with the same issue.
The issue is: what should come first: the people’s welfare, or that of creditors?
Paul Sliker: Everyone will be able to learn soon about the history of debt and ancient economic civilizations in Michael’s upcoming book slated for release later this summer. The book is called “…and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption, From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year.”
I want to let everyone know that we’re sorry we haven’t been able to keep up with our weekly episodes of The Hudson Report. Michael’s been very busy getting everything together with the book I just mentioned, and he’s just got back from a trip to Europe. Now that he’s back, we can get back to our regular weekly schedule. But for now, as always Michael, thank you for joining me on The Hudson Report.
Michael Hudson: It’s always good to be here, Paul.
was this on russia today?
yes obama is just like trump domestically.
No
Hudson is an economist and he’s been critical of Obama’s foreclosure policy and not going after the banks. He says ideologically, Obama is a neoliberal.
Which isn’t wrong
Basically. Brazil has a similar problem to Venezuela. Too much reliance on a single resource, had Lula and Chavez diversified their economies while they were flush with cash, while also working to remove major corruption, they’d have been absolutely fine when oil prices dropped.
Saudi Arabia is a massive welfare state, with a heavy reliance on one resource, and they’re scared of the same thing happening to them.
Great exposures of both Obama policy and IMF policy in this thread.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
yes obama is just like trump domestically.
He's an WRH and RT favorite to say the least.