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In the late 1920s,
Weimar
Germany
(Republic) was seriously destabilised by
the economic shocks and crises that resulted from the perils of a
market left to regulate itself. Does it not sound like an all familiar
scenario. Anyway, that economic debacle allowed fascism to rise in the
heart of
Europe
, and consequently led to the horrors of the
Second World War. After the war, the initial forty-three members that
formed the UN created the World Bank and the IMF in direct response to
those horrific consequences. Never again the charter states that such a
mistake would be allowed to happen. They called an economic conference
that came up with a solution.
Thus,
the World Bank was designed to make long-term investments in
development to pull countries out of poverty, while its twin, the IMF,
would act as a global shock absorber, promoting economic policies that
reduced financial speculation and market volatility. If all had gone
well according to the charters, when a country seems likely to fall
into economic crises, the IMF would bring in stabilising grants and
loans, thereby preventing crises before they occur. The World Bank and
the IMF buildings which are to be found opposite each other on Nineteen Street in
Washington
D.C.
, the capital of the
United States of America
, were mandated to coordinate their responses to any given economic crisis.
John
Maynard Keynes, it was who came with the idea of the two institutions.
He had headed the U.K. delegation to that world economic conference in
1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and won the argument that since
business investment necessarily fluctuated, it could not be depended on
to maintain a high level of employment and a steady flow of income
through the economy. Keynes proposed that government spending must
compensate for insufficient business investment in times of recession.
The brotherhood of man if harnessed would create quantum wealth and
quantum wealth it did create. The post-war prosperity was unequalled in
the annals of mankind and not a single blood was shed in the process.
But there was a problem, Keynes’ ideology cut deep into corporate
profits in times of growth.
Milton Friedman, who passed on - on 16 November 2006 at the age of 93, was born in
New York
and educated at
Rutgers
University
and the
University
of
Chicago
. He was the son a Hungarian immigrant. His
father lost his garment shop during the Great Depression due to union
activities. His loathing for collective bargaining probably started
there, though he always denied it. He joined the economics department
of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the
University
of
Chicago
in 1946 and went straight to work under his
mentor, Friedrich Hayek, one of the “Three Austrians” They were
anti-Keynesianism because the capitalist desire for high profit is
hampered by government, who uses what should go to them to look after
the poor.
It was in
Chicago
, in the1950s, that Friedman became a
protagonist of the economic theory of monetarism, that free market
forces, rather than increased government intervention, can most
effectively produce a balanced and non-inflationary rate of economic
growth. Their theory also created another problem: the ideology leaves
out a big chunk of the populace uncared for, and instead accelerates
corporate profits. Wealth should trickle down from those profits he
argued. He had wittingly or unwittingly discountenanced the
self-interest of man. Such purist ideology is utopian, except of course
it is administered repressively. In the beginning, no responsible
government listened to him and his followers – not even in the
USA
that was the most capitalistic.
It
was first presented to Richard Nixon in 1967, when Friedman’s Chicago
Boys populated Nixon’s cabinet – the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, but
Nixon balked. Friedman went ahead to label Nixon, “the most socialist
president in the recent history of the
U.S.
” In 1973, an opportunity reared
its head when, with the help of Chilean Chicago economics graduates
(Chicago Boys) and the CIA, Augusto Pinochet violently overthrew the
developmental government of Salvador Allende. “The Brick,” a document
that contained 220-law decree, was drafted in a room in
Bolivia
for Pinochet before the coup. When it was unleashed on
Chile
, several thousands died and many
tens of thousand unaccounted for – just to introduce the experimental
free market economy that trebled poverty.
From
Chile
in 1973 through 30 years to
Iraq
, there has not been anywhere in
the world that blood had not been shed greatly and corruption
multiplied, not to mention increased poverty, whenever the free market
philosophy has been introduced. Adam Smith had concluded rightly that
man is driven by self-interest. Friedman agrees, but he has also
twisted it. The philosophy of Friedmanite is “Shock and Awe,” because
unlike Keynes that won his on strong arguments, they know they can
never win the argument. If there is no crisis, they will create one.
‘It is crisis that will always bring change, and only during crises
that people change,’ Friedman was quoted as saying. They pray for
disaster to happen, which when the people are still disorientated by
it, they could slip in their evil machination.
Like a
crazy interrogator that administers electric shock and disorientating
drugs to his victim to make him say what he wants to hear. The Chicago
School of Thoughts is about administering economic shocks to
defenceless people to make them imbibe the free-market ideology.
Ordinarily, common people know that the system does not favour them and
tried to resist, unless of course with a gun to their head. What the
free-marketers want are hollow governments and that could be
cataclysmic. The philosophy is to hit them hard when they are very
susceptible and disorientated – mass retrenchment, higher prices,
devaluation, deregulation, and no price control, all at once, and then
tell them they have to privatise their collective wealth (public
utilities) or their prime plot of land, which by now will go for a
fraction of what they are worth.
The
whole idea is to wind back the clock to the beginning of Industrial
Revolution, when capitalists had unfettered ways of short-changing
workers. That time it led to violent revolutions. In the strong
democracy of
Britain
, Thatcher did not initiate the
Falkland War, but she took advantage of the bloody war that shocked her
people to introduce the first free-market in a developed economy. The
British rail system that was the best in the world at the time has
since been a shadow of what it used to be. In
Nigeria
, public enterprises were
deliberately under funded to give the impression of non-performance.
Babangida even released $100 million dollars, not to bail out Nigeria
Airways but to wind it up, at a time when the total indebtedness of the
national airline was less than $97 million. The money disappeared into
thin air.
During the time of Jesus,
Rome
was the procurator, whilst the custodians of
the Judaic faith (scribes, Pharisees and the Elders) were the
collaborators of the occupying force. It was double whammy against the
poor. They were compelled to pay the increasing tax to Caesar and
mandated to pay the tithes to the men of God – “much burden on the
common man.” Jesus condemned it. Friedman’s ideology wherever it goes
has always, any time practicable, have in toe a twisted brand of
Christianity, where they claim they have unlocked the secret of the
Bible to generate prosperity in the devilish free-market economy. The
ideology does not cater for the poor, but emphasised profit – in clear
violation of what Jesus Christ preached and the reason why he was
killed.
To
qualify for the prosperity, the con preachers emphasize, you must be
ready to pay the tithes, which is not too prominent in the New
Testament and a double whammy according to Christ. As the people can
see, it has only been profitable to the man of God, who has amassed to
himself embarrassing wealth. ‘When was the last time you hear them talk
about the
Kingdom
of
God
?’ a concerned clergy asked recently. Jesus, we know, spoke about the
Kingdom
of
God
on every occasion. The burden on the poor
is being multiplied by these false prophets who prey on the victims of
disaster capitalism. Instead of helping to holdout against crisis
capitalism, they have allied with it. But of course, they are false
prophets. Jesus warned that anybody that follows these men of God is
foolish (Matthew 7:15-27). Prophet Mohammed also had to flee
Mecca
because he antagonised and condemned the merchants of profit.
Nearer
home, from 1986 till now, Nigerian economy has been in a tailspin since
the introduction of the free market economy, which in any case is
distorted. Development has slowed to a trickle; throwing millions out
of job. They deliberately under funded public holdings to sell them for
peanuts. Corruption has skyrocketed. ‘Free market economy is not about
development, it’s about profit for the capitalists,’ a leading
economist recently stated. Everywhere, it has been little growth and
high profit. In retrospect little wonder why Nigerian economy has
defied growth, whilst its banks declare huge profit. Millions of
Nigerians, as a result, have fled to other lands and many millions more
are roaming the streets unemployed. Security of life is like the Red
zones of
Iraq
. Unfortunately, there is not yet a Green Zone in
Nigeria
.
It was an
irony that Friedman, known as the “Angel of Torture”, philosophically
opposed the two institutions of the World Bank and the IMF. They
represent intervention in the free-market, but there were no
institutions better positioned to implement his crisis theory. So, the
first thing the Chicago Boys did was to colonise the World Bank and the
IMF. When countries were sent spiralling into crises in the eighties,
they had nowhere else to turn but the World Bank and the IMF. There,
they hit the wall of orthodox Chicago Boys, who did not see such crises
as problems to solve, but an opportunity to experiment a sick ideology
of the new free-market frontier, where humans were being used as guinea
pigs. They were violating the charters to which those institutions were
established.
By
1989, Friedman’s neo-liberal triumvirate of privatisation,
deregulation/free trade and drastic cuts to government spending had
become official in the
Washington
financial institutions because of the
U.S.
and
Britain
’s veto powers. John Williamson
unveiled “the Washington Consensus,” which was a list of economic
policies that both institutions considered the bare minimum for
economic health – “the common core of wisdom embraced by serious
economists,” they decreed. Even though it had not worked as designed,
the way forward was never to slow down on the therapy of shock but to
apply more shock treatments. By this time, Harvard,
London
and
Oxford
had come on board. Those, it seemed, was for fear of being on the losing side.
Joseph
Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the last
holdouts against this disaster capitalist orthodoxy, wrote that ‘Keynes
would be rolling over in his grave were he to see what has happened to
his child.’ The hardcore capitalist’s main goal is to get back homeland
USA
. They cannot forgive the Englishman for introducing partial social reform in
America
. Friedman did not only hate what
Keynes stood for, he detested his person as well. He said, ‘Keynes, I
think, got it all wrong from the beginning.’ His Chicago Boys have laid
false claim to their success; always glossing over massive corruption
and loss of human life that their ideology had rained on humanity, even
in the U.S.
New Orleans
is an example.
Their patron, the chief priest of shock ideology, is gone.
Iraq
has turned out to be their
greatest failure. From Chile, Brazil, Falkland, Argentina, Bolivia,
Russia, Tiananmen Square (China), Nigeria, 9/11, New Orleans and a host
of other countries and happenings till Iraq, these countries were given
the shock dozes and during the disorientation of the people, their
wealth were carted off. Blood flowed in all those instances just
because of the ideology of some few evil men. It is evident that they
cannot sustain their crusade because it is just too bloody. ‘I think
Iraq
is the turning point and it took
the craziest ideologue to push their religion of profit, that is
equally as bloodletting as communism and Islamic Fundamentalism,
overboard,’ one commentator said lately.
Presently,
the shock they administered is already wearing off in many places and
many countries are considering their relationship with the World Bank
and the IMF. It is being championed by
Venezuela
. The mid-term election that ceded the Congress to the Democrats in the
U.S.
would slow down corporatist
America
no doubt and it is just about a good time for
Nigeria
to do about turn. If Yar’adua
means what he says and a liberalist as people claim he is, he should
start by expunging the “Chicago Boys” economists from around him and in
government. They have been indoctrinated just like some “Goodfellas”
got hooked on Nazism and became drunk on it. Considering the misery of
the ordinary people, which has become too glaring, they are not blind -
they are just plain evil.
Samuel Akinyele Caulcrick, the author of The Devil Must Be Laughing.
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Posted by Robot| 26.12.2007 11:34