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is well on its way to recovery, as a consequence. Venezuela thus helped create a healthy trading partner for itself, for Brazil and other countries. And that worked out so well that they've now created the Bank of the South, to bail out Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
World Bank/IMF loans are incurred by the rich elites who rip off the money, leaving the poor to take the debt--in drastically reduced social services, health care, education, small business loans and other help--thus creating a permanent underclass of poor to extremely poor people who can never get ahead, and lose hope. Then global corporate predators like Bechtel invade the country, and, as they did in Bolivia, privatize the water and jack up the prices to the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater! Or rip off the country's rich resources of oil, gas or minerals. And all this occurs in the context of fascist government which colludes in these predators by helping to kill labor and community organizers and small farmers, with rightwing paramilitaries, often funded by our tax dollars.
In this sense, loss of US prestige at the World Bank may be a good thing. The World Bank was/is a lender whose goal has been to rip third world economies open to global corporate predators. Jamaica is another good example. What the World Bank/IMF did there was as evil as charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater. First, the colonialists ravaged them. Then the World Bank/IMF saddled them with crippling debt. Then WTO/"free trade" policy opened them to US ag dumping. They dumped powdered milk on Jamaica, and destroyed the local fresh dairy businesses. They did the same thing with bananas and other produce. Now Jamaica cannot feed itself. Finally, a "free trade zone" was established, confined to the harbor, where goods are manufactured and directly placed on tankers for export, bypassing the Jamaican economy, taxation and labor laws, with the only benefit to Jamaica being the pittance wages of the slave labor in the "free trade zone."
These are the "benefits" that the World Bank/IMF has bestowed on poor countries. This is Clinton as well as Bush policy. Wolfowitz may be particularly corrupt. (I mean, it's just outrageous--his "agenda" at the World Bank was to "clean up" corruption in the "benefited" countries, while he himself was creating a cushy World Bank job for his mistress!). But Wolfowitz's corruption is only the visible, personal paradigm of a vastly corrupt and destructive enterprise, which is designed to enrich first world bankers and financiers, and corporate exploiters, as the expense of the poorest people on earth.
It's a tossup whether Reagan/Bush policies of genocide, or Clinton policies of permanent impoverishment, are the most evil. If I had a choice, I suppose I would choose the kinder, gentler genocide, to tossing leftists and peasants out of airplanes, or--as in Guatemala--a "Guernica" of slaughter (200,000 Mayan villagers slaughtered with Reagan's direct complicity, in the 1980s). Lawful genocide. NAFTA genocide. Genocide with the niceties covered, so that you are perceived as a "good guy."
But we don't seem to be getting many choices, lately. WE are the "Banana Republic" now...with Hillary (of all people) rushing to the rescue, to save us from that nasty Bush.
If Latin America is in revolt, and creating their own Bank, and refuse to finance fourth mansions and yachts for first world bankers any longer, who ARE they going to plunder?
Social Security, look out! Bill gutted the welfare safety net. What will Hillary plunder, in the name of "centrism," cuz we can't afford to pay the elderly their pensions, cuz of "Bush's war"?
You think the "bankruptcy bill" was bad. Just wait. We've got more of this crap coming from the "Blue Dog" (think: Gary Condit) Democrats, before we restore transparent vote counting.
American loss of prestige in the world should be the least of our worries. It would be nice to get it back, and to be known as "the people who don't torture" and "the people who don't invade other countries." Really it would. I am very attached to that America, beacon to the world. Even if our leaders violated our ideals, sometimes horribly, there was always the hope that we could put it right, and sometimes we did. Sometimes we did. The shining ideals: peace, justice, lawfulness, fairness, Constitutional government. Truth. Will of the people.
But Bush and the collusive Democratic leaders have damaged more than our reputation. They may have fatally damaged our democracy itself--our ability to change course--and our economic resilience. (The job/manufacturing bleeding started with Clinton policy, you will recall. Bush did not invent it.) Worst of all is the non-transparency that now reins in vote counting--all conducted with "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with not the slightest breath of objection from our party leaders.
It's mind-boggling.
So, expect Bushite/Puke crime to be followed by Corporate/Dem "adjustment" to the Bush/Puke $10 trillion deficit, until we are as poor as South American slumdwellers.
Unless we, too, rebel, and say, "No more!", like they are doing.
Viva la revolución!
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