Have members of the Council on Foreign Relations, and their branch organizations in other nations engineered the latest GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, as an excuse to rationalize the institution of an International Federal Reserve System?
The summit meetings of industrialized, market-economy democracies (the Group of Seven or G-7), began in 1975. They have become important annual world events, and evolved into a major world institution. The summit is a forum in which the leaders of the world's seven major industrialized countries and the European Union (formerly European Community), assisted by their foreign and finance ministers and personal representatives, set the agenda, then debate and make decisions on economic, political, environmental, security.
A good article that describes the relationship of the G-7 to the United Nations (UN) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), GATT's successor, the new World Trade Organization (WTO), and other international organizations and events can be found at http://www.usask.ca/library/gic/v1n3/hajnal/hajnal.html.
G-7 Summit Member Nations are:
Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
United Kingdom
United States
A representative from the European Community.
Representatives at the G-7 summit often include members of the Council on Foreign Relations or CFR branch organizations in the other G-7 nations. Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain, who is now the Chair of the G-7, and President Clinton are members of the Bilderberger Group. The Bilderbergers are an international organizations made of of Council on Foreign Relations members and members from CFR branch organizations such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Japan Institute of International Affairs, and Italy's Institute of International Relations.
On September 14, Council on Foreign Relations member Bill Clinton, addressed the Council on Foreign Relations, at CFR headquarters in New York. His address included the need to strengthen the World Bank, the IMF, and EX-Im bank. The International Monetary Fund will be used to fine-tune the global economy in the same manner that the Federal Reserve is used to fine-tune the American Economy. The Federal Reserve was established and is run by the Council on Foreign Relations.
In his address CFR member Bill Clinton, has tasked CFR member Secretary of the State Robert E. Rubin, and CFR member Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan J. Greenspan, to "recommend ways to adapt the international financial architecture to the 21st century." Next week CFR member Clinton will meet with Bilderberger member Prime Minister Blair, and Prime Minister Prodi of Italy at New York University law school to discuss extending the benefits of the world economy.
Unfortunately the benefits of the world economy are going to be extended to only one small group -- the members of the Council on Foreign Relations and their branch organizations in other nations ( about 60,000 people in all). The rest of the worlds population will have to suffer war, famine, genocide, and global economic upheavals, so that CFR member munition, medicine, media, energy, and food businesses at home and abroad can maximize their profits.
In his speech, CFR member Clinton informed the Council on Foreign Relations members:
"Therefore, I believe the industrial world's chief priority today, plainly, is to spur growth. It seems to me there are six immediate steps we should take to help contain the current financial turmoil around the world, and then two longer-term projects in which we must be involved.
To take the immediate first, we must work with Japan, Europe, and other nations to spur growth. Second, we will expand our efforts to enable viable businesses in Asia to emerge from crippling debt burdens so they can once again contribute to growth and job creation. Third, we've asked the World Bank to double its support for the social safety net in Asia to help people who are innocent victims of financial turmoil. Fourth, we'll urge the major industrial economies to stand ready to use the $15 billion in IMF emergency funds to help stop the financial contagion from spreading to Latin America and elsewhere. Fifth, our Ex-Im Bank, under the leadership of Jim Harmon, will intensify its efforts to generate economic activity in the developing world immediately, in the next three months. And sixth, Congress must live up to its responsibility for continued prosperity by meeting our obligations to the International Monetary Fund...
[CFR member] Secretary Rubin has been working with his counterparts in the G-7 to get cooperative support for several of these measures. I understand [CFR member] Chairman Greenspan is also consulting with his counterparts on these items as well...
Above all, we must accelerate our efforts to reform the international financial system. Today I have asked [CFR member] Secretary Rubin and [CFR member] Federal Reserve Board Chairman Greenspan to convene a major meeting of their counterparts within the next 30 days to recommend ways to adapt the international financial architecture to the 21st century...
Today, I'm asking [CFR member] Secretary Rubin to work with other financial authorities and international economic institutions to enhance efforts to explore comprehensive plans to help Asian corporations emerge from massive debt where individual firms have been swept under by systemic, national economic problems, rather than their own errors. We need to get credit flowing again. We need to get business back to making products, producing services, creating jobs.
I just want to emphasize again that even as we respond to the urgent alarms of the moment, we must speed the pace of this systemic work as well. That is why I have asked [CFR member] Secretary Rubin and [CFR member] Chairman Greenspan to convene the finance ministers and central bankers of the G-7 and key emerging economies in Washington within 30 days to develop a preliminary report to the heads of state by the beginning of next year on strengthening the world financial system.
We must develop policies so that countries can reap the benefits of free-flowing capital in a way that is safe and sustainable. We must adapt the IMF so that it can more effectively confront the new types of financial crises, minimizing their frequency, severity, and human cost. We need to consider ways to extend emergency financing when countries are battling crises of confidence due to world financial distress as distinct from their own errors in policy. We must find ways to tap the energy of global markets without sentencing the world to a cycle of continued extreme crises.
For half a century now in our national economy, we have learned not to eliminate but to tame and limit the swings of boom and bust. In the 21st century, we have to find a way to do that in the global economy as well.
I've discussed this in recent days with [fellow Bilderberger member] Prime Minister Blair of Great Britain, who is now the Chair of the G-7. He shares my belief that this is an urgent task. It is critical to the mission that he and I and Prime Minister Prodi of Italy will be discussing next week at the New York University Law School in a very interesting meeting that the First Lady and others in our administration helped to organize on how to extend the benefits of the world economy to all and how to strengthen democracy in a time of such sweeping economic change." 1 "
On September 16, Reuters released an article titled "Financier Soros Warns Global Crises Far From Over." The article tells us Soros,
"said the U.S. Federal Reserve may need to cut interest rates to spur growth, and called on the U.S. Congress to give $18 billion to the IMF to replenish the lending agency's reserves, drained by bailouts for Russia and three crisis-hit Asian states.
But Soros told the House Banking Committee that even a fully funded IMF could not end the market turmoil. "Replenishing the capital of the IMF will not be sufficient to resolve the global financial crisis."
Council on Foreign Relations member George Soros is one of the world's richest men (estimated worth: $10 billion) and probably the biggest international investor of all time. This guy lost $600 million in one day speculating on which way the yen would jump and never flinched. Soros doesn't flinch because he and his fellow Council on Foreign Relations members can always steal more money. In 1995, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, as head of the Senate Banking Committee, issued a report about the Clinton Administration's $20 billion loan to Mexico. The reason given for the loan was to prop up a staggering Mexico because any default on loans would end foreign investment in all developing countries.
The real reason was to rescue American and Mexican investors who had thrown their money into the craps game of high-interest Mexican Government bonds. For a year before the loan was ordered, on January 31, 1995, top Treasury officials and President Clinton were telling us how great things were going economically in Mexico. It was a cover-up to prevent Congressional defeat of the North American Free Trade Agreement, to bolster the Mexican and US administrations in upcoming elections in both countries, and to protect the major speculators.
An article from Newsday , "Peso Hits Record Low As Bailout Is Debated" ( Karen Rothmyer - 1/31/,95) identifies some of the Council on Foreign Relations members involved in the cover-up. They were "Former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford [who] signed a declaration of support for the [bailout] plan. Also endorsing the plan was George Soros, probably the world's most influential international investor."
George Soros is also a member of the Carlyle group. The Carlyle Group is an investor team led by Ronald Reagan's Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci III and funded in part by the Mellon family. Carlucci is a sawed off runt with a Napoleon complex and a poor self image. The furniture in Carlucci's office is miniaturized so he feels bigger. When Carlucci is photographed with other men, they sit down, and he stands up, to give the perception he is bigger. As president and CEO of Sears World Trade center, Carlucci left the company with a $60 million dollar loss, and went work for government.
The managing director of the Carlyle group is George Bush's White House Office of Management and Budget Director Richard Darman. A partner in the group is George Bush's Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Another member of the Carlyle group is Richard Nixon's White House Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Frederic Malek. George Bush Sr.'s son George Bush Jr., former CIA Director Robert Gates and current SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt are advisors to, investors in or board members of Carlyle's companies. Included in Carlyle's press kit are Vernon Jordan and Bob Strauss.
Carlucci, Darman, Gates, Jordan, Malek and Strauss are Council on Foreign Relations members. The Carlyle group has exploited their governmental connections and ties to turn itself into one of the twenty-five largest defense contractors in the world. All the members of the Carlyle group have been part of dubious investment activities. Many have been exposed in scandals that involve the Central Intelligence Agency.
Soros uses some of the money he steals to fund a group of international foundations. Foundations are used by The Council on Foreign Relations to funnel corporate and personal wealth into the policy-making process. Foundations are tax-free. Contributions to foundations are deductible from federal corporate and individual income taxes. The Foundations themselves are not subject to federal income taxation. Foundations control hundreds of Billions of dollars of money that would normally go to pay federal and individual income taxes. In 1970 there were 7000 foundations that controlled $20 Billion in assets. Nearly 40% of these foundation assets were controlled by the top 12 foundations [ Ford Foundation, Lilly Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Duke Endowment, Kresge Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Mott Foundation, Pew Mutual Trust, Hartford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Carnegie Foundation]. The top twelve foundations were controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Foundations can be created by corporations or individuals. These corporations or individuals can name themselves and their friends as directors or trustees of the foundations they create. Large blocks of corporate stock or large amounts of personal wealth can be donated as tax-exempt contributions to the foundations. The foundations can receive interest, dividends, profit shares, and capital gains from these assets without paying any taxes on them. The directors or trustees, of course, are not allowed to use foundation income or assets for their personal expenses, as they would their own taxable income, But otherwise they have great latitude in directing the use of foundation monies-to underwrite research, investigate social problems, create or assist universities, write research, investigate social problems, establish "think tanks," endow museums,etc.2
One of the Soros Foundations, the Open Society Institute ( (http://www.soros.org/), is issuing grants to promote abortion. Among the programs are those that use abortion as a method for family planning. In November of 1996 the California voters passed Proposition 215 - the Compassionate Use Act. It allows the marijuana to be grown and used for "any illness for which marijuana provides relief." The Campaign for the "Compassionate Use Act" to legalize medical marijuana would not have been successful without the funding of billionaire Council on Foreign Relations member George Soros.3
The article that follows explains how the IMF and World bank are benefiting the people of Africa. The article is by Dennis Brutus, a member of the board of directors at Public Information Research (http://www.pir.org). It appeared in the journal Africa Today, 44, 4 (1997), pages 379-384, and is posted on the PIR website.
Author's ID from Africa Today:
Dennis Brutus was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and grew up in South Africa. He was a teacher until 1962 when, as a result of his political activism -- most notably against blacks' exclusion from South African sports -- he was arrested, wounded as he tried to escape, and imprisoned in the infamous Robben Island. He went into exile in 1966. His testimony concerning apartheid helped win support for the ban against South Africa's participation in the Olympic Games. Since then, he has taught at Northwestern University (until 1985) and at the University of Pittsburgh, where he currently teaches in the Department of Africana Studies. Dennis Brutus is also known worldwide for his poetry, which reflects his prison experiences, his struggles for justice, and the agony of political exile. Notable among his publications are "Salutes and Censures (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension, 1982), "Stubborn Hope: New Poems and Selections from China Poems and Strains" (London: Heinemann Educational, 1978), and "Letters to Martha, and Other Poems from a South African Prison" (London: Heinemann Educational, 1968).
------------------- Africa 2000 in the New Global Context: A Commentary Dennis Brutus
As we prepare to enter the third millennium, a new political and economic agenda is being designed for Africa that will deeply affect the lives of its people far beyond the year 2000. What are the contents of this agenda, its implications, and some of the possibilities it opens?
Since the end of the Cold War, a new global vision has emerged with the shift to a unipolar world dominated by only one superpower. The presumed demise of the conflict between capitalism and socialism has so changed the global political landscape that Francis Fukuyama has even suggested that we are witnessing "the end of history."[1] According to Fukuyama, we are moving toward a world where major political and economic trends and patterns can be expected to remain essentially unchanged. I believe such a vision is a world where power will always be in the hands of those who now possess it, and the powerless will (unfortunately) continue to remain so -- a world where the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Politicians as well as academics are spreading this new orthodoxy.
This trend is upheld by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) according to guidelines that were established in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire, where policies were devised to prevent the type of political and economic disruptions brought about by World War II. These two institutions recently celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. Perhaps what they were also celebrating is their capability to impose the agenda that issued from Bretton Woods, which they were unable to realize during the Cold War due to the existence of a conflictual world dominated by two nuclear superpowers.
Glimpses of this agenda, particularly as it affects Africa and other "less-developed" regions, can be caught from a statement made in 1992 by Lawrence Summers, who was then chief economist of the World Bank and is now deputy secretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration. In an internal memo[2] leaked to the press, Summers proposed that the toxic waste of the "first world" be shipped to the countries of the "third world." He argued that the Third World has more space for such waste and that the cost of treating the diseases produced by nuclear waste is much lower in these countries.[3] Summers's views are typical of those who are shaping World Bank policies.
The World Bank asserts that the causes of Africa's economic bankruptcy are the corruption and inefficiency of its political class and its wasteful government spending, including that for education. What Africa needs, according to the World Bank, is not more educated people -- professionals, people with managerial skills -- but rather more people who have "practical" skills, whether in agriculture or industry. "Capacity," not education, is the key word in this context, and the World Bank has appointed itself as the agency to provide it, as we learn from their 1991 document "Africa Capacity Building Initiative."[4]
What the World Bank has recommended are both massive cuts in the education budgets of African countries -- spending cuts reaching 50 percent for some universities (for buildings and salaries of staff and teachers) -- and cuts in enrollment. Paul Johnson, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, describes such external initiatives in an article entitled "Colonialism's Back and Not a Moment Too Soon."[5] In this article, Johnson makes three points about African countries: (1) they are economically bankrupt; (2) they have discovered that they cannot govern themselves; and (3) they are now asking the colonial powers to return to run them. As unbelievable as these assertions may seem, they reflect the position of both the World Bank and the IMF as they extend their hegemony over Africa and other "less-developed" regions of the planet.
One of the central mechanisms by which this recolonization process is carried out is the loan system through structural adjustment programs. Significantly, many of the countries that received loans from the World Bank have not seen their economies improve. Quite the opposite. Some are in a far worse economic position and more indebted than they were prior to taking the loans.
Once a loan is taken, paying it back can be a back-breaking matter. But this is only a part of the problem. Even more pernicious is that the World Bank often dictates how the borrowed money is to be spent, which is specified through a whole set of "conditionalities." One of them is the drastic reduction in public spending for higher education, which can be cut by as much as 50 percent. Other conditions include equally devastating cuts in the number of civil servants and massive currency devaluations that dramatically diminish the purchasing power of many Africans, while at the same time dramatically increasing the cost of imported products.
In the case of South Africa, which is still negotiating with the World Bank, such structural adjustment policies are referred to as a "rationalization" program. The implication is that there is something quite irrational -- that needs to be corrected -- about the number of university instructors and students who are in professional programs. While the debate continues in South Africa, some of the World Bank's conditionalities are already being carried out, including the sale of South African Airways.[6] The existence of a minimum wage is seen as a major flaw. In addition, the South African government, under Nelson Mandela, has been asked to promise that it will not allow workers to strike.
The end result of structural adjustment programs, such as those proposed for South Africa, can be a country that is even more bankrupt, more unable to repay its loans, and more impoverished, as its currency is devalued, its services are gutted, and its agricultural sector is turned upside down to produce cash crops for export rather than food for the people's subsistence. This has been the case in Zimbabwe, where the World Bank persuaded the government to shift production supports from food crops like maize to export crops like tobacco. Not surprisingly, malnutrition has increased and infant mortality has doubled.
It is hardly imaginable that anyone could knowingly devise such a ruthless, heartless system that is entirely devoted to increasing profit and largely indifferent to its human cost. This, however, is the system that is shaping life in Africa today, and it is the system that we must challenge. It is crucial that we do not accept the current academic wisdom that pretends that there are no choices or alternatives -- a position one often hears rehearsed in South Africa today. The debate has been conducted within the African National Congress (ANC), where opposing sides have adopted the labels TINA and THABA, standing for "there is no alternative" and "there has to be a better alternative."
Alternatives do exist.[7] We have to challenge the assumption that structural adjustment is inevitably Africa's way to the future. A crucial condition is that African countries begin to cooperate with each other on a regional basis so that they are no longer forced to depend on the global structures and agencies that today try to dictate Africa's political and economic course. If this can happen, a better, more promising future can be envisaged.
What is certain is that we cannot accept the prospect of a world where the majority continues to become poorer and poorer while a few individuals continue to amass incredible riches. While the World Bank was celebrating its fiftieth birthday, demonstrators in the streets of Washington were declaring that "fifty years is enough!" They were part of a strong "Fifty Years Is Enough" campaign that has been mobilizing across the United States and other countries. Along the same lines, during the G-7 Summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 3,000 people gathered in the streets protesting the G-7's global agenda and organizing a "People's Summit." Similarly, during the recent Summit of the Eight in Denver, an alternative people's summit, termed "The Other Economic Summit," was convened over a period of several days. In numerous workshops, the global agenda of the G-8/IMF/World Bank was examined and challenged in Denver; among the distinguished participants were Vandana Shiva,[8] David Korten,[9] Kevin Danaher,[10] and Lisa McGowan and Njoki Njehu of the "Fifty Years Is Enough" campaign. Joining them were the homeless, women who are fighting against discrimination, and teenagers who know that there are no jobs for them and who have no hope for the future.
They all understood what structural adjustment involves, and not just in the Third World, for this program is being carried out not only in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but also in Canada and the United States. In Washington, Halifax, and Denver, people recognized that there is a link between the recolonization of Africa and other parts of the Third World, and the attack on workers' social and economic rights in the metropoles. They recognized the increasing homogenization of global rule as multinational corporations and multinational financial agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF increasingly control the economies of every country in the world. Most important, they recognized that the struggle for self-determination and human welfare must be a globally coordinated project. The future will decide whether this project can be realized. But there can be no doubt that the answer to this question will determine the course of African history in the twenty-first century.
1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
2. See Catherine Caufield, Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (New York: Henry Holt, 1996).
3. "Let Them Eat Pollution (Excerpt from a Letter Written by the Chief Economist of the World Bank)," The Economist 322 (8 February 1992):66.
4. World Bank, The African Capacity Building Initiative: Toward Improved Policy Analysis and Development Management (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1991); Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, "The World Bank's African Capacity Building Initiative: A Critique," CAFA Newsletter 6 (Spring 1994):14-19.
5. Paul Johnson, "Colonialism's Back -- and Not a Moment Too Soon," New York Times Magazine (18 April 1993):22.
6. See articles by Patrick Bond and others in Southern African Report, 427 Bloor St., West Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
7. See, for instance, various studies on sustainable development, especially Ann Seidman and Frederick Anang, eds., Twenty-first Century Africa: Towards a New Vision of Self-sustained Development (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press; Atlanta: African Studies Association Press, 1992).
8. Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1997).
9. David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (London: Earthscan, 1995).
10. Kevin Danaher, Fifty Years Is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Boston: South End Press, 1994), and Corporations Are Gonna Get Your Mama: Globalization and the Downsizing of the American Dream (Monroe ME: Common Courage Press, 1996).
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Title-50 War and National Defense § 783 states - "It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to combine, conspire, or agree with any other person to perform any act which would substantially contribute to the establishment within the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship, the direction and control of which is to be vested in, or exercised by or under the domination of control of, any foreign government."
The Council on Foreign Relations are in violation of Title-50 War and National Defense § 783. The Council on Foreign Relations has unlawfully and knowingly combined, conspired, and agreed to substantially contribute to the establishment of one world order under the totalitarian dictatorship, the direction and the control of members of Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and members of their branch organizations in various nations throughout the world. That is totalitarianism on a global scale.