Does the IMF matter any more? … Following what the IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (left with US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner) called the 'biggest ever shift of influence in favour of emerging market and developing economies' in the history of the IMF, the response of developing countries to the IMF's decision to rework country quotas should have been euphoric. However, they have hardly expressed much delight. … The IMF is probably no longer as important in global financial matters as it was earlier. Developments after the latest financial crisis has put the G20 in a far more commanding position as far as taking important decisions in global economic matters is concerned. Indeed, IMF reforms have also been largely dictated by the G20. The IMF is at a stage in its existence where it has to accept the fact that G20 will call the shots in deciding the future course of action in global finance as well as on currency and exchange rates. With the G20 accommodating concerns of emerging market and developing economies more generously, the IMF stands a good chance of becoming increasingly irrelevant in emerging market and developing country calculations. – Energy Bulletin
Dominant Social Theme: The world is moving at breakneck speed as things fall apart. Chaos looms. Institutions are pitted against one another. And order? Will it re-emerge. We yearn for order.
Free-Market Analysis: Yesterday we commented on the coming Chinese economic implosion (either slowly or quickly) due to out-of-control inflation but ran into the predictable (feedback) perspective that China will be the next towering power in the world. This viewpoint will doubtless be buttressed by the recently announced yuan-ruble swap, and certainly that is a sizable development, though not surprising given the various currency arrangements that have already been worked out by the Chinese and previous announcements that the Russian/Chinese deal was in-the-works.
In this article we want to examine the various economic trends swirling around the world to see if we can make sense of them. The conclusion we will reach in this article is that the only way to really account for all the contradictory trends is to conclude that there is a level of behind-the-scenes collusion between ALL the powers-that-be. All of them, East and West, may be cooperating to bring down the current system with an eye toward instituting something in its place that will be mutually agreed upon. (The IMF's bancor comes to mind.) It is a hypothetical conclusion of course, one of a number that we could offer (and we have explored a variety in the past). Indeed, analysis of the elite's dominant social themes inevitably leads to a variety of conclusions as additional patterns emerge and the rush of events reconfigures assumptions.
Certainly, the world seems a crazy place, with Russian and China lining up against the Anglo-American axis and the IMF (see article excerpt above) facing off against the G20. But what if what is actually going on is money power's favorite methodology of generating change: the Hegelian dialectic. If money power (leaving aside geographical locations for the moment) is setting up artificial confrontations between East and West and between developing countries and "developed" ones.
To us this might be one way of resolving some of the anomalies that we are constantly running into. For instance, the comments of Chinese leaders on a number of fronts are enough to give you metaphorical whiplash, as are Chinese actions. The Chinese are accused of firing a missile off the US's West Coast. At the same time, the Chinese are indicating they are amenable to buying a good deal of debt from struggling PIGS such as Greece in order to ensure that the EU does not founder. The Chinese accept the US invitation to prospect for rare minerals in Afghanistan (thus supporting the US war effort) and are apparently in sincere negotiations with the West generally on a number of fronts. The Chinese, like Russia, belong to the G20.
Russia itself is providing training and support for the Afghan army that the US is cultivating to fight the Taliban as NATO and the allies withdraw. Russia is considering a request to join NATO and just agreed to help fund a European missile system to protect the West from terrorism. China is sitting on close to US$1 trillion in securities and throughout the 2000s sold the bulk of its goods to the US and was the biggest buyer of US paper, taking over from Japan. These are all quite conflicting events. And the recent announcement of yuan-ruble swaps, replete with protestations that neither country wants to weaken the dollar (only expand currency options) adds yet a further layer of confusion.
It is true, as we have maintained in the past, that the dollar will be hard to dislodge as the world's reserve currency so long as the Middle East continues to demand dollars for oil – and as the US is the world's leading military power, with a predominant strategic base in the Middle East, it is hard to see how that state of affairs will be upended. And yet … as we have asked recently, what if the Anglosphere itself wants to dislodge the dollar? What if it does have strong relationships with China (and Russia) – and much of the apparent tension is so much shadow play? We asked these questions after the failure of the US to impose its will on the G20 regarding the dollar-yuan relationship. We concluded then (as now) that there is no real evidence either way but we were inclined to believe that the Anglo-American defeats were real ones. We expressed it then, as follows:
While the outcome of the meeting seems clear, there are certainly different ways that it could be interpreted in the alternative, "conspiratorial" media. Accepting that the power elite aims at creating world government, one could argue that a diminishment of US clout brings such an environment closer. One could also argue, as we pointed recently, that failures involving the G20 generate increased nervousness and thus hasten the kind of financial chaos that the Western elites can take advantage of.
We have mentioned previously that some powerful Chinese families may self-indentify as Jewish. The "Li" family in China is commonly held to be the most powerful, with the Lis (or Lees) also seen as controlling Hong Kong and prominent in Korea and perhaps even Singapore. There are questions as to whether these disparate familial groups are linked or not and even how much clout the Li family exercises within China. The Lis are said to operate within the communist party as well as outside of it and were also close to Mao …
What the G20 summit is showing us is a continuation of a trend. The Anglo-American axis was evidently not able to impose its will on the rest of the world. One can go round in circles trying to figure out if this is part of some sort of larger, Machiavellian strategy. But let us take it at face value for the moment. Right now any moves to solidify the IMF's control over the global economy via a more formalized role as a central bank does not seem entirely realistic. Currently, the Western elite's apparent goal of taking over the world's economies via the mechanisms of Bretton Woods seems to be less realizable, not more.
You can see the article here: www.thedailybell.com/1524/G20-Goes-Wrong.
In the concluding paragraph above, we decided to take the results of the G20 conference at face value – that the West was losing out economically and industrially to the developing world and China. In THIS article we have explored more thoroughly the idea that many of the world's current tensions up to and including military ones are perhaps artificial ("dodges") – dominant social themes. They are, in other words, fear-based promotions purveyed by the Anglosphere in particular to cow Western citizens into giving up power and wealth in return for the "safety and security" of global governance.
The thesis we are therefore suggesting – without by any means endorsing – is that the elites are setting up various Hegelian dialectics that are designed to create a one world government. Without argument and counter-argument – tension and counter-tension – there can be no progress toward a given goal, in this case a New World Order. The current economic crisis itself is part of that process; we will even make the argument (in support of this article's hypothesis) that the various yuan swaps are designed not only to destabilize the dollar (thus creating a demand for a new currency like the IMF's hypothetical bancor) but are providing building blocks as well.
What would this new currency consist of? A basket of currencies, perhaps, and even commodities. Just last night as the news was breaking about the ruble-yuan swap, Bell feedbacker and former interviewee (savvy Ingo Bischoff, a colleague of economist and Bell commentator Antal Fekete) predicted in a Bell thread that such agreements were inevitably setting up a kind of gold standard. He argued that they were also eroding the US dollar reserve itself, which has served as a substitute for the gold standard these past 40 years. Going forward, many countries may begin to compare various currencies, even dollars, to gold rather than the world's manifold currencies to the price of the dollar.
Now we continue to anticipate that sooner or later China too will suffer from the inevitable ruin that follows the activation of central banking economies (see yesterday's article on China's seeming persistent and growing inflation). But it is perfectly possible that a larger definition of money power must include the idea that a severe worldwide depression (and even resultant wars) are part of the building blocks necessary to support an ascension to world government. Within this context, the yuan is beginning to provide not only building blocks for a basket of "bancor" currencies, but also perhaps a reinvigorated gold standard potentially as well. What seems to be an attack on the dollar is actually creating the very monetary environment that money power now seeks as necessary to transcend the dollar.
Even within this Machiavellian context, however, it is possible to make the argument that money power – and the Anglosphere itself – has miscalculated. The economic crisis may well have been sharper and deeper than they expected. Additionally, the Anglo-American elites (especially) are in a position as a result where they must negotiate with other power centers in ways they have not had to historically. Finally, no matter what the relationships are between various elements of money power, it seems clear to us that there have been many miscalculations as regards elite promotions in the 21st century. Global warming is a chief example of how badly a dominant social theme can unravel in the Internet era.
Ultimately, in our view, no matter whether the emergent paradigm is East versus West or whether such stand-offs are artificial, the confrontation between the truth-telling of the Internet and the Anglosphere remains real and is in fact deepening. The civic unrest in Europe is not by any means part of a dialectic in our view (though it may be the outcome of one), nor is the uproar in the US that has led to the Tea Party and now has overtaken pat-downs and X-ray scanners at airports. The unraveling of numerous power elite, fear-based elite promotions is an untoward event generously advanced by the Internet.
We are professional meme watchers! As such we do our best to provide you, dear reader, with analyses from a variety of perspectives. The point of analyzing the dominant social themes of the elite is not necessarily to be "right" – that being a subjective term when confronting the breadth, depth and sophistication of money power – but to examine all available options with the goal of increasing one's understanding of the way the world really works. It is a never-ending process. It is one that encourages regular revisions in one's world-view as more evidence comes to light and patterns are detected that illustrates one thesis at the expense of another. One's investments deserve no less, nor does one's family or personal prospects.
