e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 03-09 December 2023

The Netherlands is sending US F-35 fighter jet parts to bomb Palestine. And while we are on the ‘edge of an economic precipice’ (see ee Economists, Sanderatne), the bands (media) on this supposedly stationary Titanic wreck are announcing the latest imperial medleys & celebrity superstars & charitable loan-givers.

     The local media are bribed handsomely to strike up a lot of song&dance about the Dutch state returning some old captured cannon&swords (at least they were once made here!) to Sri Lanka. There are even Dutch flags flailing outside the besieged ‘National Museum’ on ‘Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha’. Why not give Sri Lanka a 30% stake in ASML? (ee 11 Nov 2023, Tradition of Knowledge behind Europe’s Most Valuable Tech Co). Instead, according to Dutch accounting, we still owe them!!! Meanwhile, Elon Mutt, the CEO of Twitter, has banned the term ‘decolonization’ from his platform. We must thank him! Next: Post-Colonial!

     It turns out, it’s precisely to prevent such decolonizing ‘reparations’ for their ongoing horrors that the US & their Euro killer-poodles set up the World Bank’s ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes). Italian mining companies then sued post-1994 South Africa at the ICSID, for enacting policies giving 30% of every company to their historically disadvantaged people (see ee Random Notes about ICSID cases against Sri Lanka so far). So much for ‘truth & reconciliation’!

     This ee Focus therefore also looks at the colonial origins of ICSID & other supranational (imperialist?) bodies like Chambers of Commerce that are the source of the real ‘corruption’ in this country, and the spooky Mont Pelerin Society (President Ranil a member!) which is behind USDollared thinktank Advocata (with Borah merchant sahib Murtaza Jafferjee at its head & Catholic Action ‘poor boy’ Dhananath Fernando as nominal CE-hO), and faux media outlets like EconomyNext, etc, who are guiding Sri Lanka’s economic policy today.

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• The JVP slogan for the next election is ‘Pohosath Janathawak – Pohosath Ratak’ (‘A rich people – rich country’, as translated by anglomaniacal Sunday Times, see ee Focus). This slogan recalls SBD de Silva’s classic query, ‘What do the rich think rich means in Sri Lanka?’ And perhaps echoes Deng Xiaopeng’s ‘It is glorious to be rich.’ The JVP leader goes on to add: ‘We should have a corruption-free country with democracy in place. Today we do not have economic democracy.’

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• The whites of this world see ‘democracy’ not as ‘the will of the people’ or ‘the results of the election’, but as a specific type of NATO-aligned ‘liberal’ government. While signaling such ‘populist’ mantras as democracy & corruption, it’s good that AKD rescues his notion of democracy by asserting the economic facet – though what kind he does not exactly say, outside of calling for much-media-maligned import-substitution. Again, recalling the 1970s, SBD de Silva pointed out the then UF government’s type of import-substitution was not part of a modern industrial political, economic & military strategy but a scrambling to resolve an acute balance-of-payments snafu.

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• The Romans and the English, Marx recalled after India’s first war of Independence in 1857, pampered and fattened their allies, before slaughtering them. This is what the US and its killer poodles are setting out to do in Sri Lanka with the so-called middle class it promoted all these years, as it sets about refashioning a new multinational division of labor to rescue itself…

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‘Of one they said that he had robbed funds

from the city government; of another, that he

had not succeeded in some undertaking

because he was bribed; and of yet another,

that because of his ambition, he had committed

this or that impropriety. As a consequence of this

hatred arose on every side, which led to deep disagreements,

from deep disagreements to sects, and from sects to ruin.’

– Machiavelli, 1517 (see ee Focus)

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As for corruption, such accusations alone, as if it were some personal or psychological genetic (family) defect – fail to show how it’s due to the particular structure of the merchant & moneylender ‘rentier’ capitalism that fuels such ‘corruption’. While being an easy route to power, perhaps, such constant vague accusations will be used again the next government. & on & on it shalt go…

     It turns out these accusations are part of that old CIA Playbook, that was also behind the so-called Aragalaya – an attack on the ability of the state to function as an engine of modern industrial growth but only as a repressive tool of the merchants (see ee Politics, CIA Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence).

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• While the media sometimes admits that it was: ‘the aggressive borrowing [by the US-backed Yahaplana government] in the international bond market’ that ‘resulted in the country borrowing $12billion during 2015-19, resulting in the country’s foreign currency debt stock reaching almost 50% of the total debt stock of ISBs at around $15bn’. And that, ‘Of the $12bn so raised only around $2bn had been utilized to settle ISBs, most dollars were utilized to finance imports, especially cars’, such revelations are not given any saturated (like an US-Israeli blitzkrieg) media coverage, unlike the USA’s ‘China Debt Trap’ bull.

     This week also saw a feeble, isolated, lonely, forlorn news item claiming the ‘Private sector as much to blame for corruption’…Really! The World Bank’s Transparency International (TISL) adds, ‘The private sector are also the enablers of this corruption that we see. Such grand-scale corruption couldn’t have happened without the lawyers, real estate agents’ (see ee Economists). But only lawyers & real-estate agents? What about all them bankers, US & EU & other poodle envoys, & CEOs, accountants, & media publicists who got us to look somewhere else while they entrapped the country?

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• Smokin’ Harsha de Silva of Ceylon Tobacco Co & Assembly of God fame, says there is no proof that companies are parking their country’s dollars abroad (see ee Economists, SJB belatedly defends 2017 Foreign Exchange Act, rejects claim of funds ‘parked’ overseas).

     ee therefore provides testimony of a ‘marketing & communication’ executive at Switzerland’s ‘UBS, the world’s largest private bank… best bank in the world & the oldest wealth manager on earth… about 200-250 years old’. It’s about UBS helping their clientele ‘disappear’ money. And in this overarching moment of bats & balls & bunker busters, she also exposes the role that sports & celebrities play in helping banks seduce the ‘emotions’ of the enormously wealthy. (see ee Random Notes, She Exposed UBS, they ruined her life: Meet Stephanie Gibaud)

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• ee keeps asserting that the corporate media has no right to accuse only politicians of corruption. They are all ‘sponsored’ by the same multinational corporations (MNCs) & their petty merchants & moneylenders. News items should clearly state not just which ‘news agency’ (Reuters, AP, BBC, etc) but the PR firms too (WPP, JWT, Phoenix, Mullen Lowe, Grants etc who’ve taken to awarding – Effies, indeed! should be Effems! – & congratulating themselves over & over, where do they find the time?), and name the main corporations and embassies, etc., funding the news item.

     A simple analysis of the news section would show that many news items repeated ad nauseam in all the media emanate from the same publicist sources: Unilever, P&G, Exxon, CIC, CTC, the US & other embassies, World Bank, IMF, ADB… And many are promises using the infinitive verb ‘to’, which means it may happen in the next birth or one after that, perhaps… These news items are actually not for us but for these offices & institutions to report to their bosses in Washington & London & Brussels, on how well they are ripping off & fooling the natives.

     The corporate media will of course not saturate us with more vital issues such as irrigation…even as the present government is out there ‘attracting’ investment at the International Water Summit (see ee Agriculture)

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• This ee Focus continues sharing the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s Alternate Program: this week examining irrigation, providing some startling data. Irrigation was the historical basis of the solidarity of the ancient village, and the main focus of the sabotage by the colonial powers of food security (outside of attacks on iron smitheries). In 2000, the water system in Cochabamba – Bolivia’s 3^rd-largest city – was privatized and handed over to US corporation Bechtel, who jacked up prices, making it impossible for most people to afford water. They even made collecting rainwater illegal! …

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‘In essence, Sri Lanka’s economic revival hinges on a fundamental shift in policy, one that prioritises State-led industrialisation to address market failures. This shift should maximise positive externalities, address indivisibilities and pursue dynamic comparative advantages. Since comparative advantage is inherently shaped by past technological advancements, which in turn influence contemporary scientific progress, specialisation based on current comparative advantages under free trade like labour-intensive garments and apparels, electronics assembly, plantation crops, etc. hinder the expansion of science, labour productivity and ultimately, economic prosperity. The policy framework must therefore foster job creation in sectors that align with scientific advancement’ (see ee Economists, Taxing poor to reward rentiers – Pathirana

Contents:

Bankers & their Media: Way More Corrupt than their Politicians