Theft

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 07:56 PM 7/17/98 +0100, Mark Jones wrote:
>I believe the reverse is true: the money is given with the intent that
>it be stolen. I saw this kind of collusion with my own eyes in Russia.
>How else do you rpepare a country for plunder? You create a rotten
>oligarchy which fears its own people and is universally despised in
>turn. You turn a natural resource base into a debt-ridden beggar; and
>you bind a country into underdevelopment duress forever. That's what
>they planned to do in Russia and that's just exactly how they did it.
>The loans sit in Swiss banks and their very sequestration from global
>capital circulation wipes them out as a burden on the lender; but the
>debtor is bound into a usurious relationship with the West: what else do
>you call 150% interest rates on Russian GKOs (state bonds) but usury?
>
>Corruption among recipient kleptocracies is not a perverse by product of
>aid, it's the heart of it, and designedly so.

I do not claim any special knowledge of the true intentions of the
first-world oligarchs.  I simply assume that the main purpose of 'global
capitalism' is the transfer of resources from the periphery to the core,
and establishing kleptocracies in the periphery does not seem to be a very
efficient way of accomplishing that transfer.  The capitalist ruling class
can tolerate peripheral kleptocracies for the reason of political
expediency, but I do not think that catering to the third world pashas and
mandarins is the main goal of global capitalism.

Regards,

Wojtek