World Finance Officials Pledge More Resources to Aid Growth … World finance leaders pledged Saturday to use more resources to try to bolster economic gains as they confront stubbornly slow growth and a rising backlash against globalization. The policy committee for the 189-nation International Monetary Fund said the world has “benefited tremendously from globalization” but that protectionism is a threat. Increasing anger over globalization dominated the annual meetings of the IMF and its sister lending agency, the World Bank. – ABC/AP
What’s the solution to Brexit? More spending on international trade.
Because people are angry about globalism, the IMF has decided its member states need to spend more money counteracting the “globalist” backlash.
We’ve been following the “populism versus globalism” meme closely and have written it is justifying increased spending on globalist programs, as you can see from this excerpt above.
We have always been suspicious of the Brexit outcome, believing that elites in Britain could have manipulated votes against Brexit if they’d wished to do so.
Apparently, they did not. Instead, Brexit passed in order to create “directed history.”
The idea of this history may be to use “anger” expressed by Brexit to develop costly, new programs supporting worldwide trade. Presumably such additional resources might flow into support for technocratic trade agreements such as TPP.
More:
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said “growth has been too low for too long, benefiting too few,” and that’s what officials need to address. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said global leaders must address concerns of inequality and injustice caused by globalization, such as tax evasion by big corporations and job losses by workers.
“We must fight against this immorality of globalization, this inequality, to again give our people the taste for openness and multilateralism,” Sapin told reporters. “There can be an unhappy globalization and we must fight against it.”
In their statement, IMF officials committed to designing and putting in place policies “to address the concerns of those who have been left behind and to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from globalization and technological change.”
The article mentions both Brexit and the U.S. presidential campaign of Republican Donald Trump as evidences of disgruntled populism. This is one reason why we think there is the possibility that Trump could win in November.
Perhaps Trump could win the popular vote on his own. But it seems to us, given the dispersal of easily hacked voting machines around the US, that the election can be tipped in whatever the direction elite political forces choose. A Trump victory would further justify globalist spending to counteract the pernicious impact of Trump and Brexit.
The article warns, as others have, that the effects of Brexit have not been consequential in the short term but that in longer term, there will be significant difficulties for Britain, Europe and the world.
Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank … said a lot will depend on how prolonged the post-Brexit uncertainty lasts as Britain and the EU negotiate next year over the terms of separation. “It’s a matter of this political uncertainty that clouds the outlook for growth,” Draghi said … U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged the IMF to “more boldly and forcefully” push member countries to pursue all economic policy options to spur growth.
According to this article, The Obama administration wants countries with trade surpluses like Germany, to spend more to boost global commerce.
Over and over we are seeing these themes in the mainstream media. Lagarde sums up succinctly, saying that global trade must be “fostered” to make sure “global trade works for all.”
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim mentioned “tremendous anger against trade.” But added that poverty could not be lifted around the world without “more robust trade.” This would include increased spending to support additional immigration and emigration.
What we are seeing with the “populism versus globalism” meme is classic elite propaganda. Create the problem and then counteract it by creating new and costly programs (paid for by common taxes) that can be integrated into the fiber of elite-controlled international relationships.
Conclusion: The outcome of Brexit must be a coordinated campaign of worldwide spending to ensure the benefits of globalization – even though Brexit was an emphatic statement against such globalization. Thesis, antitheses, synthesis … and so it goes.
