Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Leave it to the market

Big Pharma can't be trusted to solve Coronavirus

If you are not radical enough Lessons from Nicaragua to the Arab uprisings, Syriza, Venezuela ... "The achievements of the Sandinista government between 1979 and 1990, while they allowed for significant improvements of the living conditions of most of the Nicaraguans, did not break with the export-oriented extractivist model dominated by big capital. Nor did they promote active citizen participation in the economic and political decision-making processes. The fact that the political institutions and internal organization of the FSLN were left undeveloped allowed neoliberalism to regain a foot­hold. Further, there were no tools people could use to prevent the Ortega regime from corrupting the other government institutions." Nicaragua 1979-2019

Also goes by the name "the international mother fucker" It is more beautiful when it is headed by a feminist/a feminist mother.  There is no shortage of people who want to lead a criminal institution with a global reach and they are proud of it. I recommend Eric Toussaint's writings

Breaking news We have never been so close to equality, global justice, development and prosperity for all. Now both the IMF and the World Bank are headed by women! That will certainly make a radical change in the operation of global capitalism. 

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) "1. The domestic policies of the BRICS states follow the general tenor of what one might consider Neoliberalism with Southern Characteristics. 2. The BRICS alliance has not been able to create a new institutional foundation for its emergent authority. It continues to plead for a more democratic United Nations, and for more democracy at the IMF and the World Bank. 3. The BRICS formation has not endorsed an ideological alternative to neoliberalism. 4. Finally, the BRICS project has no ability to sequester the military dominance of the United States and NATO... The force-projection of the United States remains planetary. If we look into the entrails of the system, we will find that its solutions do not lie within it. Its problems are not technical, nor are they cultural. They are social problems that require political solutions. The social order of property, propriety, and power has to be radically revised..." ...

What is the value of the economic reforms imposed on the Arab world?

Hickel goes against the grain, but wants to correct and better manage capitalism with modest solutions. Yet I think the book is worth reading. The Divide:  A brief guide to global inequality and its solutions

The underpopulated countries of Africa are in general underpolluted. The quality of the air is unnecessarily good compared with Los Angeles or Mexico. Polluting industries should be encouraged to move to the less-developed countries. A certain amount of pollution exist in countries where salaries are low. I think that the economic logic whereby tons of toxic waste can be dumped in places wehre salaries are low is irrefutable ... Any concern [about toxic products] will anyway be much greater in a country where people live long enough to develop cancer than in a country where the infant mortality rate is 200 in 1,000 by the age of five. — Lawrence Summers*, internal memo of the World Bank, December 13, 1991.  Quoted in Toussaint and Millet, 2010, pp. 255-6 *Summers was at the time chief economist and vice-president of the World Bank. He later became Secretary of the Treasury in Bill Clinton's government, before becoming the president of Havard University, until June 2006. The ext...

"We have flags, a national anthem, but everything else is decided by the West. It's all wrapped up in nice words, under cover of aid extended by such bodies as the WB and the IMF, that are nothing more than instruments of torture invented by the West to continue its domination." — Ahmed ben Bella, president of the Algerian Republic, 1963 to 1965. Quoted by Toussaint and Millet, 2010.

"Repaying the debt is an essential obstacle to satisfying basic human needs, such as access to clean water, decent food, basic health care, primary education, decent accomodation, and satisfactory infrastructure. Without any doubt, the satisfcation of basic human needs must take priority over all other considerations, be they geopolitical ot financial. From a moral point of view, the rights of creditors, shareholders, or speculators are insignificant in comparison with the fundamental rights of five billion citizens. Debt is one of the main mechanisms through which a new form of economic colonization operates to the detriment of the developing countries. It is one more brick in the edifice of historic abuses, also carried out by the rich countries: slavery, pillage of raw materials and cultural goods, extermination of indigenous populations, and colonial servitude. The time is overdue to replace the logic of domination by the logic of redistribution of wealth in the name of jus...

The IMF and the World Bank The myth of "helping the poor" and "development" "The joint IMF–World Bank comprehensive approach to debt reduction is designed to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage. To date, debt reduction packages under the HIPC Initiative have been approved for 36 countries, 30 of them in Africa, providing $76 billion in debt-service relief over time. Three additional countries are eligible for HIPC Initiative assistance." 
 Back in 2008, some analysts showed that the HIPC initiative had failed, and failed miserably. 
Let's take just one aspect behind the failure. "The creteria used for country selection excluded the mostly highly populated developing countries (for example, Nigeria — 120 million inhabitants — which was on the very first list in 1996) and kep only small countries that are both very por and heavily indebted... The countries where the majority of the world's poor people live are...

"The financial crises that affected the developing countries between 1994 and 2002, resulting from the deregulation of the market and the private financial sector as recommended by the World Bank and the IMF, led to an enormous increase in internal public debt. In short, by following the Washington Consensus, governments of developing countries had to give up their currency and capital controls. This was combined with the deregulation of the banking sector in different countries. Private banks had to take more and more risks, which led to numerous crises, beginning with Mexico in December 1994. Capital was massively withdrawn from Mexico, sparking off a chain reaction of bank failures. The Mexican government supported by the World Bank an dthe IMF, transformed the banks' private debt into internal public debt. This took place in extactly the same way in countries as different as Indonesia ((in 1998) and Ecuador (1999/2000).  In addition, even in those countries whose bank...

How to "hide" crimes According to a report by the World Bank itself "the development of biofuels has caused a rise of 75 in food prices between 2002 and February 2008 (out of the 100 percent global rise, while the prices of energy and fertilisers accounted for only 15 percent).  This estimate is much higher thatn the 3 percent figure retained by the U.S. administration. According to the World Bank teh hike in prices has already cost consumers $324 billion in poor countries and could drive 105 million more people into poverty. So as not to displease President Bush, the World Bank did not publish this report. It was a leak in the press that allowed the information to emerge. This analysis of the World Bank remains ideologically tainted by neoliberalism. The development of agro-fuels is not responsible for the 'disorganisation of the markets' but reveals their irrational policies and their criminal consequences [my emphasis]. Eat, drink, or drive, the free m...

"Masters in the art of deceipt, the accused institutions [the IMF and the World Bank] concede some mistakes so as to remain at the center of international affairs. Far from being worried by the increasing poverty that it causes, the World Bank seems more concerned with social troubles that put neoliberal globalisation in jeopardy. In a semi-confidential report, under the guise of a mea culpa , it continues to promote an economic model that has deliberately denied impoverishment people vital protections from the insatiable appetite of the most ferocious economic actors. From now on, the new edifice that ensures the expansion of the model of capitalist agriculture consists in making access to land subject to market forces, but also water resources, which amounts to a privatisation of biological life. Finally, it promote the concentration of agricultural resources and encourages speculation." Debt, IMF, and the World Bank  by E. Toussaint and D. Millet, 2010, p. 123

The dictatorship with the enslavers Egypt's rising debts

I am reading Debt, the IMF and the World Bank by Éric Toussaint and Damien Millet. It is an indictment of the IMF as an international criminal organisation of enslavement. "Following the exigencies of the governments of the richest companies, the IMF, permitted countries in crisis to borrow in order to avoid default on their repayments. Caught in the debt's downward spiral, developing countries soon had no other recourse than to take on new debt in order to repay the old debt. Before providing them with new loans, at higher interest rates, future leaders asked the IMF, to intervene with the guarantee of ulterior reimbursement, asking for a signed agreement with the said countries. The IMF  thus agreed to restart the flow of the 'finance pump' on condition that the concerned countries first use this money to reimburse banks and other private lenders, while restructuring their economy at the IMF's discretion: these were the famous conditionalities, detailed in th...

The big powers and their imperialist institutions decide. [S]ome recognition means the state "enjoys some of the benefits of being a state such as access to the World Bank, the IMF, and the International Olympic Committee."  "It's essentially impossible for a group to become independent and claim its own statehood unless others, other powerful states, are willing to support it" The cases of Somaliland, Kosovo, and East Timor

Amartya Sen "On the issue of liberalisation and the opening up of economies, Amartya has been rather mainstream. He hasn't raised very deep questions about the whole process and of globalisation in general. He's more of a mainstream economist than many people realise." More substantial criticisms revolve round his role in the current globalisation debate. Richard Jolly, while being an enormous admirer, says: "On the issue of liberalisation and the opening up of economies, Amartya has been rather mainstream. He hasn't raised very deep questions about the whole process and of globalisation in general. He's more of a mainstream economist than many people realise." Food for thought

Bill Gates and 4bn in poverty