World Bank

World Bank Warns It Could Happen Again

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Just when you are lulled into sleep, thinking the financial crisis is over, here comes the World Bank with different ideas. While they start with how the world has economically recovered and all is well, later in the report are some not so swell numbers for the U.S. as well as warnings that the Globe could return to the financial crisis of 2008. Below is the World Bank's latest GDP growth projections for 2011 and 2012.

China in Their Own Words

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If the yuan isn’t stable, it will bring disaster to China and the world. If we increase the yuan by 20 percent-40 percent as some people are calling for, many of our factories will shut down and society will be in turmoil. If China’s economy goes down, it’s not good for the world economy.

This is China Premier Wen Jiabao, as quoted by Bloomberg News.

Get that? The United States should continue to export jobs to China as some sort of global social program. We should continue to give the Chinese people our jobs so they won't raise hell and revolt. We should allow China to continue to manipulate it's currency, capturing global manufacturing capabilities to keep the Chinese government in power. Wow. Maybe we should import Chinese potential social unrest, for the United States policies are stiffing the U.S. worker and the cries from the Populist are a muted whimper.

Jiabao also chastised the EU for joining the United States in demanding China re-evaluate their currency and blamed the United States for currency fluctuations. Businessweek:

Europe shouldn’t join the choir to press China to allow more yuan appreciation. The euro had a big fluctuation recently. It’s not because of yuan but the dollars. We shouldn’t be blamed for it; if there’s someone to be questioned, it should be the U.S.

The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet -- Part Deux

SDRs, PPPs, the IMF, UN and World Bank

In the first installment of The Global Agenda: Privatizing the Planet, I attempted to establish the suggestion of the underlying foundation and causation for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), that being debt financing, which propagates debt trading, debt swaps and various and sundry securitizations and securitized financial instruments.

Within this post, I shall attempt to establish the connection between the IMF's Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the creation of debt and those private-public partnerships as debt-affiliated vehicles which are a major force in the privatization of everything.

Admittedly, these connections may appear tenuous to some, but it is definite food for thought.

Exhibit 1

From an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, dated March of 2006:

63. Public/ private partnerships (PPPs) are currently not covered in statistical guidelines. At the January/February 2006 meeting, the AEG agreed that the PPPs are sufficiently important to be described in the revised SNA. It also agreed that a list of indicators would be useful to help determine the economic owner of the fixed assets associated with a PPP but that it was necessary to examine arrangements on a case-by-case basis. An annex on PPP will be included in the SNA, with an understanding to keep abreast of developments in international accounting standards.[1]

Exhibit 2

G-20 & Debt Forgiveness

As the leaders of the industrialized world converge on Pittsburgh later this week to  "commit to a framework for sustainable and balanced growth" (as President Obama has put it), perhaps a nail in that frame could be the forgiveness of the debt burden saddling many of the world's poorest countries.

Your Tax Dollars Offshoring Jobs

This is my second story about OPIC – OVERSEAS PRIVATE INVESTMENT CORPORATION – a Department of the United States Treasury. This one is based on the OPIC 2006 Annual Report. It contrasts my earlier report on OPIC 1999. Robert Mosbacher, Jr., CEO of Mosbacher Petroleum, is the new CEO of OPIC. Mosbacher Petroleum was skimming money off ENRON back in the 80’s. OPIC was giving money directly to the oil companies. Now banks are skimming money off the U.S. Treasury and lending it to the oil companies.

OPIC - Overseas Private Investment Corporation

We have all heard of the Export / Import Bank (EXIM). We have heard of vague references to trade manipulation, balance of payments, debtor nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO), violent protests around the world, including Seattle (who were those people?), etc. Few have heard of OPIC. Overseas Private Investment Corporation is a department of the United States Treasury. Immediately you may wonder why “Private” and United States are associated in the same sentence. I was curious. It’s exactly what you think.