Millions of people have lost their jobs, and their lifelong savings. In developing countries, poverty and despair prevail.
While the lockdown is presented to public opinion as the sole means to resolving a global public health crisis, its devastating economic and social impacts are casually ignored.
The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy and extreme poverty.
This is the true picture of what is happening. Poverty is Worldwide. While famines are erupting in Third World countries, closer to home, in the richest country on earth,
In India:
“food is disappearing, …. in shanty towns, too scared to go out, walking home or trapped in the street crackdowns,In India there have been 106 coronavirus deaths as of today, to put things in perspective 3,000 Indian children starve to death each day”
From Mumbai to New York City. It’s the “Globalization of Poverty”.
Production is at a standstill.
Starvation in Asia and Africa. Famine in the U.S.
All countries are now Third World countries. It’s the “Thirdworldisation” of the so-called high income “developed countries”.
And what is happening in Italy?
People are running out of food. Reports confirm that the Mafia rather than the government “is gaining local support by distributing free food to poor families in quarantine who have run out of cash”. (The Guardian)
This crisis combines fear and panic concerning the COVID-19 together with a sophisticated process of economic manipulation.
From Structural Adjustment to Global Adjustment
Today, the mechanism for triggering poverty and economic collapse is fundamentally different and increasingly sophisticated.
The ongoing 2020 Economic Crisis is tied into the logic of the COVID-19 pandemic: No need for the IMF-World Bank to negotiate a structural adjustment loan with national governments.
What has occurred under the COVID-19 crisis is a “Global Adjustment” in the structure of the World economy. In one fell swoop this Global Adjustment (GA) triggers a Worldwide process of bankruptcy, unemployment, poverty and total despair.
How is it implemented? The lockdown is presented to national governments as the sole solution to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic. It becomes a political consensus, irrespective of the devastating economic and social consequences.
The lockdown together with the curtailment of trade and air travel had set the stage. This closing down of national economies was undertaken Worldwide starting in the month of March, affecting simultaneously a large of number of countries in all major regions of the World. It is unprecedented in World history.
Why did leaders in high office let it happen? The consequences were obvious.
This closing down operation affects production and supply lines of goods and services, investment activities, exports and imports, wholesale and retail trade, consumer spending, the closing down of schools, colleges and universities, research institutions, etc.
In turn it leads almost immediately to mass unemployment, bankruptcies of small and medium sized enterprises, a collapse in purchasing power, widespread poverty and famine.
What is the underlying objective of this restructuring of the global economy? What are the consequences? Cui Bono?
- A massive concentration of wealth and corporate capital,,
- the destabilization of small and middle sized enterprises in all major areas of economic activity including the services economy, agriculture and manufacturing.
- facilitates the subsequent corporate acquisition of bankrupt enterprises
- It derogates the rights of workers. It destabilizes labor markets.
- It creates mass unemployment
- It compresses wages (and labor costs) in the so-called high income “developed countries” as well as in the impoverished developing countries.
- It leads to an escalation of the external debt
- It facilitates subsequent privatization
In one fell swoop (in the course of the last months) the COVID-19 crisis has contributed to impoverishing a large sector of the World population.
And Guess who comes to the rescue? The IMF and the World Bank:
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