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What Really Happened
comment by Mike Rivero
Banks, just like any other business, are not immune to failure and collapse. In the last ten years we have seen a great many banks abandon prudence for greed and engage in some very reckless behaviors, which ruined a great many banks. (This not a problem from yesterday, but has been on going for many centuries centered around Jewish finance and credit houses from the Polish empire of the 16th century to the Rothschild and their mischief making in the 19th and 20th century)
But the banks, apparently convinced that they should not suffer the consequences of their folly, plied willing politicians with campaign donations (Obama's very first act upon coming to power was to bail out the banks.......though his political rhetoric before assuming power stated otherwise..."Change you can believe in" )and insisted that it was up to the state, meaning the taxpayers, to make up the losses and keep the banks in business.
This is, of course the hallmark of a fascist economy, in which profits are allowed to be kept by the profiteers, but the losses are socialized onto the people. The Icelanders do not wish to live under Fascism, and they expressed to their government their wish that tax funds not be used to shore up the banks.
The government of Iceland refused to listen, and not only poured available revenues into the banks, but borrowed even more money to try to keep the banks afloat!
Americans who watched the US Congress ram through TARP and numerous other bailouts even as 90% of all Americans were opposed to bailing out the banks with taxpayer funds will understand how frustrated the Icelandic people felt.
Simply on the point that the people of Iceland (and America) refused their consent to allow taxpayer money to be poured into the failing banks gives the Icelandic people (and Americans) a moral right to refuse to underwrite those loans.
But beyond that is the legal concept of "Odious debt". This is a legal concept in international law which states that the people of a nation are obligated to repay only those debts of the government incurred for the benefit of the people, such as roads, schools, infrastructure. The argument has been made, and has been upheld in international courts, that the people of a nation are not liable for the debts incurred by a government to fight wars, or to repress the people. Clearly, given that the bailouts of private banks are not being done for the benefit of the people, but for private businesses, the same concept clearly applies.
(If this International Legal principle could be extended to include debts of Third World countries as legally binding that would be a significant step forward in the real "liberation" of poorer countries.
Third World nations suffer at many levels, but their biggest challenge is poor government and governance. Once a Third World nation has an effective government, the fundamental basic problems of the nation can begin to be resolved (China......30 years of steady growth 8--10%, and now focusing on social issues such as migratory workers and the needs of the rural poor; there is absolutely no doubt that China will resolve these problems within a few years).
But unfortunately at present too many Third World nations are lumbered with poor governments, which are not answerable to their people. A lot of these governments are obvious installed puppets of powerful predatory hostile powers such as the USA/UK/France........unfortunately puppet regimes of powerful first world states tend always to be corrupt and inept.
Overt obvious examples being Afghanistan and Iraq presently, countries which are also occupied by the above.
These governments swindle their people and their national economy out of $ 100 billions and put the looted money in tax havens of which 70 exist around the world. Additionally these corrupt governments borrow heavily from the rich countries, funds which are also misused, siphoned into tax havens or invested into white elephant prestige projects.
The end outcome is more misery for the ordinary people in poor countries, and the elevation and concentration of wealth for the few, who are subservient to the alien foreign power. To compound the misery of the ordinary people IMF/WB intervention invariably ALWAYS introduces "austerity" measures which in simple terms means cuts in government subsidies to key sectors of the economy which benefit the majority....such as health, education, subsidized food, subsidized power, subsidized fuel and transport. Thus under the new system, poor people work harder to pay "their" debts to first world institutions........more of the Third Worlds wealth is transferred to the rich countries such as the USA, with its $15 trillion economy, amassed through not just hard work and human ingenuity of Americans, but also through overt exploitation of poor countries.
If the great and the good could develop a legal mechanism, where by debts incurred by corrupt Third World governments does not become a liability for the ordinary poor people in those countries then that would be a wonderful evolution in International Law.
Under International law how do you precisely define corrupt inept puppet regimes of Western powers? Might not this be subjective? Disagreements must arise if such an exercise were attempted surely. Well we live in the 21st century and there are various credible mechanisms to measure the level and quality of government and governance around the world.......its not a true science, but it exists, organizations such as Transparency International, and a whole host of other International bodies which measure the effectiveness of governments around the world, the levels of corruption and so forth.
We can use these neutral bodies to gauge which nations people pay for the mistakes of their "ELECTED" governments and which nations people don't..........otherwise what we have here in the international monetary system is a rather cushy scam by certain Jewish banks based in Zurich, London and New York, carrying on with business as usual.)
Since Iceland has already thrown out their previous government, under Odious debt the people of Iceland are only liable for the debts incurred by that previous government to build roads, hospitals, harbors, and other civil projects.
The people of Iceland are not liable for the loans taken out by the government to bail out private banks.
And of course the same legal principle applies here (USA) as well.
(not with this political setup, and Supreme Court.....if however the USA were to have another revolution then it would be a different matter)
