e-Con e-News

Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News June 2023 Part 4

*

‘Among the Indians it goes by the name of Sielediba,

but the Pagans call it Taprobane…

As its position is central, the land is a great resort

of ships from all parts of India, and from Persia & Ethiopia,

and in like manner it despatches many of its own to foreign ports.’

(6^th Century African traveller Cosmas Indicopleustes

quoted in Changing Patterns of Navigation in the Indian Ocean

& their Impact on Pre-colonial Sri Lanka, RALH Gunawardana)

Sri Lanka was building some of the largest ships in the Indian Ocean by the 7^th century AD. The English finally destroyed this shipbuilding network in the early 19^th century. English ships and boats had not been able compete with an intrepid Sinhala industry. The English sabotaged the sector by deploying such devices as denial of ‘insurance’ etc to disqualify the eligibility of local shipping to carry goods (just like they’re using ‘green standards’ now to undermine local production).

     The destruction of shipbuilding also damaged the local iron, lumber and woodworking industries. The English in the 19^th century also destroyed other supply industries such as cotton (for clothes & sails, et., recall what misty Kuveni was spinning back in the BCs) as well as the ingenious irrigation infrastructure of the purana gam – all such tales, ancient and modern, yet to be demystified and narrated.

     Today India is modernizing their ports, some which could divert traffic away from Sri Lanka’s ports. With ever larger container ships being launched, Sri Lanka will be challenged as the ‘the only deepwater commercial port in South Asia, and the only hub port between Singapore and Dubai that can accommodate the new generation of large vessels’ (see ee Random Notes). 

     Sri Lanka was an ancient ‘mediatrix’ in the ocean – indeed another ‘Mediterranean’, a ‘Zhongguo’ (as China’s own name calls itself) – a centre of the world. Sinhalé not only provided oceanic intelligence and seamanship. Yet we can never forget that we once also manufactured local goods, not just oceanic goods as a centre of shipbuilding industries. There are numerous fake front companies for other countries’ multinational corporations (MNCs), some claiming to build boats in Sri Lanka – calling assembly, production, eg Japan’s Colombo Dockyards, etc. Then there are those who use us as a front to ‘penetrate’ other Asian and African economies.

     In such a tenor, ee notes again the pitiful yet recurrent attempts by the media (& the importers, politicians & officials they perform lip services for) to headline ‘local industrial production’. This week we had to endure the most shiny glossy photos of luxury cars purportedly ‘made’ here. Could such rare products and primitive (yes, industrially primitive!) methods of production capture the home market from Toyota, Suzuki, Tata-Leyland & Bajaj, let alone transform local industry? – hah!

*

A parade of locally assembled vehicles –

A ‘National Vehicle Parade’ with over 150 locally assembled vehicles

in line with the Industry 2023 – National Industry Exhibition,

jointly organized by the Ministry of Industries

& the Industrial Development Board

(ee Industry, Parade)

The Quad could beg USAID to sponsor a new version of the Mahavamsa, portraying Vijaya as a Vanga (Bangla) exporter bringing machine parts for Kuveni’s spinning wheel, then bedding the importer before replacing they/them with an Indian sales agent!

*

‘Dealers said the demand for Dollars rose

due to further relaxation of 300 imported items

& in particular from importers of bathroom fittings & tiles.’

(ee Economy, Dollar gains vs Rupee)

     Meanwhile, it seems a major job requirement of our envoys abroad – when they are not pimping exploitable workers and other natural resources – is to act as import agents. This week Sri Lanka’s envoy in India demanded Sri Lanka end restrictions on imports, and quickly fulfil the rest of the IMF’s demands. This of course is another false whine, cos most of almost everything is imported (ee Random Notes, Moragoda).

*

‘In 1956, the major creditor countries set up the Paris Club

to renegotiate Argentina’s debts…

The Paris Club went on to conclude 433 agreements

with 90 different debtor countries…

In 1976, private bankers set up the London Club

to renegotiate Zaire’s debts.

They then continued to renegotiate the claims

of private foreign creditors on other countries.

(ee 12 Feb 2022, A Quicky World History of Fake Debt, Default & Destruction).

• We hear little to nothing about the London Club and the great private banks from our even greater economists (see ee Economists, Developing Debt Disaster). But this week, ‘President Ranil Wickremesinghe met the Paris Club on foreign debt restructuring’. Many English speakers, particularly roués – up on the latest sex, drugs & rock’n’roll – may associate a Paris Club with the cabaret & can-can of Moulin Rouge. But the Paris Club that detains us here, and the President there, is the Paris Club that is the united imperialist front for the major national shylocks of this world.

     Our dearly unelected President also met the IMF’s boss, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. These personages meet, they prattle platitudes, their stenographers get them printed. What exactly of Sri Lanka’s future is he selling off on the slave block in Paris? We are not told. It cannot be his neck. What about other of his body parts? This ee reproduces analysis of how Canadian companies robbed all of Zambia’s main mineral resources (copper, gold) by demanding them as payment for this mythical debt default business. The English media then blamed China for Zambia’s debt (ee Focus, Canadian Looting of Zambian Resources Led to Debt Crisis)

     This ee also recalls how Germany had to hand over all its timber and coal to pay for defaulting on reparations for WW1. What World War has Sri Lanka waged and lost, we wonder? (see ee Quotes).

     It’s no coincidence that the merchant Suresh Kumar Shah placed in charge of fulfilling the IMF’s demand to rob state resources is the chair of London’s Ceylon Tobacco Company, and intimately linked to several other grand importers. A bagman for the ruling Selvanathan families, Shah this week also affected a rush to fling – profitable or not – all the state’s ‘enterprises’ onto the roulette table… err… stock market (ee Random Notes, SK Shah). Or should we say, prop our corpulent mercantile Humpty Dumpty high up on that murunga attha called Wall Street, while furtively exposing its flirty ISBs – international sovereign bonds as delectable.

     Ironically, or not coincidentally, Sri Lanka’s dearly unelected President, much loved in the butt-freezing North Atlantic, was in gay Paree while the French government was concurrently holding a conference on international finance (see ee Economists, French Ambassador wants to work together for a more inclusive global financial system; also, Developing Debt Disaster).

     It may be recalled, when now-convicted Nicholas Sarkozy was France’s President, he paid capitalist reformers Joe Sitglitz & Amartya Sen (nee Rothschild) to come up with an alternative index to GDP, in the wake of the destruction caused by the financial meltdown of 2007-8: Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up! Wonder where that effort ended up? GDP is still all the rage.

     France appears to be taking over Canada’s old role as a supposed ‘neutral’, being mildly critical of the US hegemon (perhaps affecting the demurrals of that old Gallic General de Gaulle regarding NATO) and avidly attempting to cosy up to the BRICs countries etc. Canada, meanwhile, is stepping up to growl as another pitbull of the US empire, which more and more is using the UN as camouflage for its destabilization of our countries (see ee Focus, UNDP).

*

• Yet another corporate whine this week – another corporate press release posing as a news item – this time from the drug importers. Denying that their members have imposed 400% price increases, admitting that since the Dollar exchange rate had gone down, they should have decreased prices, while at the same time demanding increased prices when the Dollar appreciates. In other words, they wish for ‘market’ pricing – even as we all know the pharma ‘market’ is dominated by a few MNCs, of which these local ‘Pharmaceutical Industries’ are but importers:*

*

• The Dutch government has ‘revealed’ their multi-million$ colonial profits. They are even willing to return artifacts taken (note the story doesn’t say, ‘stolen’) during the Dutch period (note the story doesn’t say, ‘invasion’, period!  – see ee Sovereignty). However, our first reaction (suspicion?) is to suggest they keep their loot and their accounts. We don’t want their variable guilders or euros either. Why don’t they instead share intellectual property rights, patents, etc, blueprints and access to ASML Holding, the Dutch MNC that specializes in the development and manufacturing of photolithography machines used to produce computer chips. It would be a start on the journey towards real justice. They could tuition their Boer settler cousins in Zud Afrika, what real truth & reconciliation (and reparations) mean. We’ll take the bling back later.

Economists, Envoys, Importers & Pimps, Bankers, Thugs & Lobbyists