News stories related to the World Bank and IMF

A selection of news stories related to the World Bank and IMF, brought to you by the Bretton Woods Project:

The World Bank's spin on carbon markets
REDD Monitor
31 May 2012

Eskom coal plants might be at risk
Independent Online
30 May 2012

Historic moment for the IMF on capital flows: Cross-border finance should be regulated, indeed as any other form of finance
Financial Times
29 May 2012

Greece can do without the 'sympathy' the IMF has shown Niger
Guardian
29 May 2012

Greeks unite against Lagarde after 'tax-dodgers' jibe
New York Times
28 May 2012

Ms Lagarde's morality tale: She should know better
Guardian
27 May 2012

Christine Lagarde's "tough love" is an insult to Greece
New Statesman
27 May 2012

South Africa: World Bank Board discusses Inspection Panel report on Eskom investment support project
allAfrica
25 May 2012

The 'limitless horizon" of capitalism

INTERVIEW  The 'limitless horizon" of capitalism By Claudio Gallo http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NE23Dj03.html TURIN - Costanzo Preve, 69, born of Italian parents and with an Armenian grandmother, never had it easy; he chose the path of uncompromising philosophy, away from academic circles and cultural fashions.  He graduated in Turin, but his intellectual journey was really accomplished later in Paris, with teachers like Jean Hyppolite, Louis Althusser, Jean Paul Sartre, Roger Garaudy and Gilbert Mury.  Nothing today seems less attractive to the literary salons than his critical thought that inextricably links two great German thinkers that the second part of the 20th century has definitely shelved: Karl Marx and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.  Unlike what most school textbooks continue to teach, in line with Dilbert    Cold War communists, Preve argues that Marx never really committed "parricide", bringing Hegelian dialectic "down to earth", but instead he is essentially Hegel's pupil.  Preve interprets Marx as "a superfical materialist and a structural idealist". He stresses that, "crucial to Marx is the idea of universal history, seen as the drama and tragedy of human emancipation. While Hegel, wisely, maintained the historical balance in the relationship between past and present, Marx took the risk to talk about the future, characterizing it as communism. The relationship between Hegel and Marx is structural for me, something denied by most of the so-called Marxists who recognize an influence, but don't admit the idealistic character of Marx's philosophy.  "Quite another thing is Marxism, that is a systematized 'ism', but Marx never systematized his thought. It was produced in 20 years, 1875-1895, by [Friedrich] Engels and [Karl] Kautsky. The primal scene of Marxism, to use [Sigmund] Freud's language, is a form of leftist positivism inscribed in the progressive tradition of the Enlightenment."  Preve begun to recognize the historical failure of communism very early. He also has carved out for himself a role as critic of the "Bad Infinity" of neo-capitalist globalization, based on the Greek concept of limit, taken in the light of Hegelian-Marxian dialectics.  His freedom of thought, which cuts across his huge bibliography, also led him to a dialogue with an undefinable thinker with remote far-right roots such as Alain de Benoist, a choice that the sharp-eyed censors of the mainstream left did not like at all.  Claudio Gallo: Professor Preve, is it possible to say, according to your Marxian perspective, that globalization is the final stage of capitalism?  Costanzo Preve: This Final Stage obsession led to a lot of errors in the past, we must be careful to use that word. History categorically denies any diagnosis of Final Stages. Is globalization the Final Stage of capitalism? I really don't know, I would not use that expression. Unlike man, who passes from youth to maturity and then enters a final stage, history proceeds while the Earth keeps circling around the sun.  I would say that globalization is a new standard, a qualitative leap in the production of the capitalist world. The imperialism of the 19th century was also a kind of globalization: if one studies [Fernand] Braudel and [Immanuel] Wallerstein, one sees that world trades existed already in 1500, but even if Spanish, Portuguese, British and Dutch ships could reach every port, evidently that trend was not yet of the purely economic kind. Globalization is the logic of capitalist production at its purest.  CG: So historical development had to wait for modern technology?  CP: It lacked technology, sure, but perhaps above all, there were still large areas of the pre-capitalist world - community, slavery, feudal, aristocratic. So it is not just a problem of technology but of geographical saturation. Globalization is a capitalistic saturation of the whole world: I do not think that it's a final stage, but it certainly is a crucial moment in human history.  CG: In your review of the dialectical history of capitalism, you set capitalism as "limitless horizon" against "metron" - the Greek sense of limit and armony. What you suggest is a dialectic reappropriation of "limit" as opposed to the endless hunger, the unlimited desire of accumulation of globalization. Don't you think that this dialectical path, all inside Western culture, may sound extraneous to the Chinese or the Indian world?  CP: The Greek culture and then the Roman and Medieval Christian culture are internal to the Western world. Colonialism exported them militarily during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to areas outside Europe.  In Asia there were ancient civilizations with their own identity that developed along lines completely different to what we call Jewish-Christian civilization (the hyphen should be replaced with an "and", and should be added "and Greek, and Roman, etc").  The impressive success of capitalism in countries like China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, shows that we are not observing a Calvinist secularisation because this would make sense only inside a kind of Western history. In my opinion, it's rather a sign that capitalism has evoked deep dynamics that already existed in these cultures, even if main national traditions were completely different. I am convinced that globalization has produced a storm, an economic tsunami that maybe has not melted the world in a unique mould but has created a series of common problems that in the past centuries did not exist.  CG: Marxist theory rules that capitalism brings inside itself the contradictions that will lead to its overcoming. However, Marxist predictions never materialized and globalized capitalism (unlike states) apparently enjoys an excellent health.The working class, formerly considered as a possible engine for change, is in disarray: on which collective identity is still possible to establish an alternative to the world of the Megamachine, as Latouche defined it?  CP: Neo-capitalism carries many contradictions within itself. For example, it is incompatible with any form of Keynesianism. Coping with crisis a national state devalues its currency or depreciates its labor force. The case of Europe is crystal clear.  The Union was founded on a neoliberal model, certainly not social-democratic. That means balanced budgets and a fight against inflation as the main enemy. If a state loses control over the national currency and its depreciation, the only thing that can give a competitive advantage is devaluation of labor. We are in this situation and this is why I am against this Europe. I see no other alternatives to the future return of national currencies.  The euro was a historic mistake. Its apparent goal was to make Europe a competitive subject in globalization. As a result, however, the continent is not able any more to deal with globalization, but it's sucked to its most perverse logic: the devaluation of human work. Globalization has meant decentralization of production, labor flexibility, job insecurity and lack of future. The very fact that these things are proclamed only by marginalized forces such as Beppe Grillo in Italy or Marine Le Pen in France, means that the establishment - the left and the right - the ones that have access to the media, decided to support the euro, hiding the true consequences of this choice. That's why we live in a schizophrenia that is likely to worsen in the next years.  CG: A leit motiv of globalization is human rights; at first sight that appeared to be a positive form of universalization. In your bookEthical Bombing you attack the philosophy of human rights as "variable geometry".  CP: Human rights perform the same function of the "white man's burden" during the colonial era: to spread Western civilization against barbarism, through missionaries and gunboats. I consider the politics of human rights unconditionally negative.  Theoretically speaking, human rights derived from Natural Law, a theory already known by stoics and taken over by Christianity, which took its main form in 1500-1600 in the works of many thinkers.  The concept began to decline in 1800 with the advent of juridical positivism. The founder of modern political economy, David Hume, criticized the theory of natural rights. He claimed that there is no such a right, the only thing that exists is people's inclination to exchange.  Those who speak of human rights make a pointless exercise of metaphysics. Why these human rights that were destroyed on the dawn of English political economy are now recovered, especially after Nuremberg's Trial [of Nazis] , as a Western ideology of control?  Human rights is an ideology at variable geometry, because to decide what is human and what is not are the major economic oligarchies through their executives: university professors and journalists. The left has fully adopted the theory of human rights at variable geometry.  It is a theory that makes impossible any analysis of the structural, economic and social world. We are always faced with a dictator against whom there is a whole people in revolt, it may be [Slobodan] Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, [Muammar] Gaddafi and now [Syrian President Bashir al-]Assad.  So it is less and less impossible to analyze historical contradictions, social and religious reasons. To real people they artificially superimpose this view apparently of doing good but in reality evil-doing because it is the premise of a bloody military intervention.  We live in a pure Orwellian time: war is called peace, the Italian soldiers in Afghanistan are called peacekeeping troops but they are deployed against Taliban insurgents on behalf of US geostrategic interests. In reality, human rights politics makes its own goal impossible: a true universalization of humanitarian conditions of the world. It's the modern equivalent of Hitler's racial theory. I realize that this phrase may seem crazy, extreme and paradoxical, but I believe it is true.  CG: Is mainstream media just describing globalization, or rather, as Noam Chomsky puts it, playing an important ideological role in its support?  CP: Cicero wrote: I don't understand how haruspex [the Latin divinator] do not burst out laughing when we meet. I wonder why journalists don't do the same. Mainstream media are telling for over a year now that the Assad government is falling down, but Assad still clings to power, and among the opposition someone, maybe al-Qaeda or not, started to use bombs against civilians.  We have the paradox that our guys are the evil ones while their guys seem comparatively normal. The media have created a parallel universe to guide the real universe into the direction desired by oligarchies. Media have today the function theoratores, ie the priests, had during the Middle Ages.  Today the Church is a great social charity acting inside the crisis of the welfare state. The new clergy is composed of two categories: the secular, the university professors who are (I speak of social sciences, not about physics-chemistry-biology), with their weltanschaung, homogenized and politically correct.  There are of course important exceptions but they are not relevant. Then there is the regular clergy, ie the journalists. The society we live in is always tripartite: bellatores, oratores andlaboratores. The first layer is the great financial oligarchy, in many aspects transnational, but substantially rooted nationally. Then there is the clergy, as we've just seen. And then an immense mass of workers that are internally divided, because obviously there is nothing in common among guaranteed workers in Europe and the great mass of Third World poor knocking at the gates of the US and Europe.  CG: It is now commonplace thinking that the center of world power is shifting towards the East. The [Barack] Obama administration is adjusting its strategic doctrine to confront China in the Pacific and Africa. Is it true that Europe's decline is inevitable?  CP: Before answering, let me say that despite its great international growth China is not a country wanting to export its own model: in Chinese culture there is no trace of the Protestant mission to bring the truth to others in a world where there are no borders but only frontiers.  The expansion of China in Africa is purely economic. Since Africa has ceased to be the backyard of France and England, Beijing is looking for raw materials in geostrategic competition with Washington. It's interesting in this perspective to see the position of Italy, which once a minor colonial power, has just made in Libya a war against its own interests.  The American interest in the East began to take shape with Word War II. The vast network of American military bases from the Atlantic to the Pacific shows that Washington remains anchored to the old scheme despite the decline of Europe. Indeed, Europe has committed suicide and no longer exists as a political actor. Europe lost in 1989, with the collapse of communism, a chance to gain its independence.  CG: Speaking recently on Europe's Day, the president of the European Council [Herman] Van Rompuy said that the United States of Europe will never exist ...  CP: The existence of the United States of Europe would entail the dismantling of US bases; how could there be in fact Athenian democracy with Spartan bases on the Acropolis? Europe decided to politically disappear as a consequence of the sense of guilt for the Holocaust.  The Holocaust religion (to be clear, I do not deny the Holocaust, I'm talking about its ideological dimension) has brought Europe into a state of permanent immaturity. The message is: if they left we Europeans alone we will surely return to commit horrible crimes, we cannot be left to ourselves, we need always someone to control us, because fascists or communists are always ready to materialize and take control. That "someone" is obviously the benevolent American empire.  Claudio Gallo is the World News editor of Italian daily La Stampa.  (Copyright 2012 Claudio Gallo.)

Social Media ‘Young Turk’ Takes Steering Role at Bilderberg

Social Media ‘Young Turk’ Takes Steering Role at Bilderberg 2012

• 
  

Infowars.com
May 31, 2012

http://www.infowars.com/social-media-young-turk-takes-steering-role-at-bilderberg-2012/

This year’s Bilderberg Meeting will witness the emergence of the ‘Young Turks’, top executives of social media giants, some of whom have been promoted to head steering committee status this year in Chantilly. Top among the list of these is Peter Thiel, head of Clarium Capital, who provided the financial muscle for online ventures like Facebook and Paypal, as well as LinkedIn and Friendster.

Watch part two of Infowars.com journalist Patrick Henningsen and the Guardian’s Charlie Skelton’sexposé on Bilderberg, as they discuss its new guard, its deep intelligence roots, and its sway over the EU, all covered for the first time on British TV with Edge Media’s “On The Edge” show, which aired on May 17, 2012 on SKY’s Channel 200, Controversial TV.

….

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Italy tax police arrest ex-BPM chairman

UPDATE 1-Italy tax police arrest ex-BPM chairman

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/29/popmilano-idUSL5E8GT38R20120529

Tue May 29, 2012 7:34am EDT

(Adds details, background)

May 29 (Reuters) - The Italian tax police arrested the former chairman of Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) on Tuesday in connection with a probe into loans irregularly granted by the mid-sized lender.

The tax police and investigative sources said Massimo Ponzellini, who left the Milanese mutual bank at the end of 2011, was one of three people against whom they were executing arrest warrants on allegations that include criminal association.

Ponzellini, 61, was placed under home arrest, they said. He is currently chairman of Italian builder Impregilo.

Milan prosecutors suspect that "huge" loans were granted partly "through the falsification of evaluation procedures at the bank" and given in exchange for 5.7 million euros in bribes, a police statement said on Tuesday.

When the investigation led to searches at Ponzellini's offices and residences last November, investigative sources said the anomalous loans included one worth 148 million euros given to gaming company Atlantis-BPplus after it won back in 2004 a contract from state gaming body AAMS.

The other arrest warrants were issued against Francesco Corallo, who investigators consider as the ultimate owner of Atlantis-BPplus, and Antonio Cannalire, a person with interests in the gaming business and seen as close to Ponzellini.

Corallo is fugitive and Cannalire was placed under home arrest, investigative sources said.

Ponzellini and the other two could not be immediately reached for comment.

The investigation led by Milan public prosecutors was triggered by a Bank of Italy report in June 2011 that followed a long inspection at BPM to shed light on doubtful loans. (Reporting By Manuela D'Alesssandro; Writing by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

Colonies of an Overworld Power Structure

Link here: http://www.rt.com/news/greece-euro-salbuchi-future-514/
Drach to the future! The Greek currency conundrum
Published: 29 May, 2012, 21:20

The fear that - fed up with their artificially-created sovereign debt crisis
- Greece might abandon the euro sends chills up many a Global Power Master's
spine. So what are the pros and cons of that option to the Greeks?
Let's begin by asking whether or not a sovereign country should have its own
currency at all.
When the British, Spanish and Portuguese colonies of 19th century America
fought for independence from their respective Mother Countries, a key
conflict was that London, Madrid and Lisbon not only insisted on controlling
colonial trade, but also wouldn't allow their colonies to coin their own
money. So, yes, a tell-tale sign of a colony is when you cannot / will not
issue your own currency to run public finances to serve the Common Good.
Does that mean then that European Union countries are colonies? If so, of
whom?
First pause: 21st-century colonialism is far less "territorial" than its
19th-century counterpart. It's no longer a question of New York,
Massachusetts or Pennsylvania having to heed King George's orders from
London, or Buenos Aires, Lima and Santiago having to obey the Spanish Court.
Geography is, shall we say, "horizontal".
Today's colonialism is far more "vertical". In a way, today all countries -
even the US and UK - are colonies of an Overworld Power Structure: an
increasingly centralized financial, political, economic and monetary system
so powerful and so all-pervading that, though we may not "see it" - for it
has and needs no "geographical center" - it is, however, everywhere.
From the point of view of sovereign nation-states, 21st-century colonialism
controls countries "from above", even if the global controllers' euphemistic
Orwellian "Newspeak" talks of "markets", "investors", "the international
financial community", "sovereign debt crisis", "toxic assets", IMF, World
Bank, WTO, and so forth.
Second pause: is a national currency really that important? We could ask the
Argentineans, now the Greeks - even the Germans - who all have first-hand
experience in what it means to suffer monetary meltdowns (when the national
currency ceases to exist), but let's take a look even further back. To
ancient China, for instance.
Po-Chü-I was a Chinese sage, poet and politician born in Taiyuan who lived
from 772 to 846AD, rising to the rank of governor of Chung-chou in Szechwan.
Regarding national currency, he said something like this: let farmers reap
their harvests, let bakers bake bread, let forgers make swords, let traders
distribute goods throughout the realm, and let warriors defend our borders,
but minting money and creating currency must be the sole monopoly and right
of the Governor; for therein lies all power.
Lucky for Po-Chü-I, he never attended Harvard or London Business Schools so,
untainted by today's perverse paradigms he perfectly grasped that whoever
controls the currency of the land, controls the activities of the land, and
thus controls who gets what, when and where, what shall or shall not be done
(whether in war or peace), and thus holds the Destiny of the Realm in his
hands.
Now, let's fast forward back to the 21st century and ask the $64 million
Chinese question: Should Greece revert to the drachma?
Our Chinese sage would certainly recommend that! Because when a horrible
financial crisis like Greece's explodes, it's the Greeks who must decide who
should pick up the bill, which requires first understanding who is
responsible for the debacle in the first place.
Are the Greek people really responsible for what is happening to them or was
it irresponsible usurer global bankster speculation inside and outside
Greece? Since finance is globalized, banksters can, vulture-like, spot their
prey - for instance a country with a specific set of "opportunistic market
conditions" - home in on it, gobble-up its economic sap, then take-off and
disappear, leaving behind a horrible mess that someone else (the Greeks, in
this case) must clean up.
Mme Christine Lagarde - head of the vulture bankster's IMF watchdog -
clearly spelled it out when she insolently told the Greek people they should
"pay their taxes"; bankster-talk for "pay your pound of flesh so we can
bail-out the banksters!".
That's what happened to Argentina in 2001 and 2002, where local caretaker
governments obeyed the banksters to the extreme that six months before our
meltdown, Argentina named David Rockefeller's (JPMorgan Chase / Trilateral
Commission / Council on Foreign Relations) and William Rhodes's (CitiCorp /
Council of Foreign Relations / Americas Society) hand-picked economic
hit-man Domingo Cavallo as finance minister to engineer a full-fledged
monetary collapse.
Cavallo had "invented" a currency board called "convertibilidad" which
masked the fact that Argentina had no real currency: for every peso issued
there had to be a US dollar in the Central Bank "backing" it. If no dollars
came in, no pesos were issued. When vulture "investors" decided to stop the
influx of dollars, Cavallo stuck to his "convertibilidad" straightjacket and
Argentina's financial system collapsed into itself.
So Greeks: the road to tread seems clear.... And you, Spaniards,
Portuguese, Irishmen, Italians... Lend me your ears!! Because you're all
next!!!
Controlling your own currency is a key component of national sovereignty. It
can ensure economic growth in a balanced and socially responsible manner in
good times, and if bad times hit and crises explode, a national currency can
become a lifeboat ensuring you don't sink into oblivion.
Here, bankster "experts" will lash back saying, "yeah sure, governments
print more money and you get inflation and... The sky is falling! The sky is
falling!!" Instead, they will recommend you "re-finance" and accept their
nice new "mega-loans", to bail-out their own "toxic debts", and ensure that
the debt-trap cycle can roll on and on and on.
Ask yourself: what's easier to overcome, higher inflation of your own
currency that you can control or...owing unpayable zillions of dollars and
euros to international bankers you cannot control?
Shrewd as always, the British understood this when the euro was born.
Britain is inside the European Union, but outside the euro, keeping instead
their pound sterling. Which doesn't mean they're monetary crisis-proof,
but...should they run into even deeper trouble, the Bank of England can take
whatever emergency measures it considers expedient to protect Britain's
national interest.
Ask yourself: who do you think will be more sensitive to Britain's needs in
times of trouble, the Bank of England in London or the European Bank in
Frankfurt, Germany?
Dear Greek friends: take a cue from England and go back to the drachma!!
Sort out your mess yourselves, negotiate with the global banksters talking
the only "language" they understand, which is not the "invisible arm" of the
"market", but rather the closed fist of national sovereignty attached to
that arm!
You can give the banksters a bloody nose - and do it "the Greek Way"!!
That was Po-Chü-I's message 13 centuries ago, and the Brits' today... even
if the Western media won't dare spell it out as clearly as that.

Adrian Salbuchi for RT
Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV
commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar

Greece Gives Banks $22.6 Billion

Greece Gives Banks $22.6 Billion As Exit Panic Causes Savers To Pull Funds

Reuters  |  Posted: 05/28/2012 2:49 pm Updated: 05/29/2012 8:41 am

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/28/greek-banks-exit-panic_n_1551030.html?ref=business

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* HFSF disburses 18 bln euros of EFSF bonds

* NBG, Eurobank, Alpha, Piraeus to regain access to ECB funding

By Lefteris Papadimas and George Georgiopoulos

ATHENS, May 28 (Reuters) - Greece handed 18 billion euros ($22.6 billion) to its four biggest banks on Monday, the finance ministry said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The long-awaited injection - via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund - will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha , Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

"The bridge recapitalization of the four largest Greek banks was completed today with the transfer of funds of 18 billion Euros from the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF)," the finance ministry said in a statement.

"This capital injection restores the capital adequacy level of these banks and ensures their access to the provision of liquidity funding from the European Central Bank and the Eurosystem. The banks have now sufficient financial resources in support of the real economy."

The finance ministry statement confirmed what an official at the HFSF had earlier told Reuters. The HFSF was set up to funnel funds from Greece's bailout programme to recapitalise its tottering banks.

The HFSF allocated 6.9 billion euros to National Bank, 1.9 billion to Alpha, 4.2 billion to Eurobank and 5 billion to Piraeus. All four are scheduled to report first-quarter earnings this week.

The news came as two government officials told Reuters that near-bankrupt Greece could access 3 billion euros, left from its first bailout programme, to cover basic state payments if efforts to revive falling tax revenue fail.

"Our finance ministry efforts at this time are focused on boosting revenue," one official told Reuters. But he added that if those efforts failed they would "examine all alternatives, including the 3 billion euros from the first bailout".

Greek state coffers are on track for a more than 10 percent fall in revenue this month, a senior finance ministry official said last week. Officials had warned the state could run out of cash to pay pensions and salaries by end-June.

The 3 billion euros is held in an intermediate HFSF account.

Greece has been struggling through a fifth year of recession and political turmoil, triggered by an inconclusive vote this month that has fanned fears the country could be forced to leave the euro zone.

The country's struggling banks have been among those hit hardest by the uncertainty, with a rise in deposit outflows.

Huge writedowns from a landmark restructuring to cut Greece's debt nearly erased the capital base of its biggest four banks, which rely on the ECB and the Bank of Greece to meet their liquidity needs, after savers began pulling their cash out on fears that Greece could go bankrupt and out of the euro zone.

Last week the ECB stopped providing liquidity to some Greek banks because their capital base was depleted.

With access to wholesale funding markets shut on sovereign debt concerns, Greek banks have been borrowing from the ECB against collateral, and from the Greek central bank's more expensive emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) facility.

Bleeding deposits, the country's lenders have borrowed 73.4 billion euros from the ECB and 54 billion from the Bank of Greece via the ELA as of end-January.

Together, the sums translate to about 77 percent of the banking system's household and business deposits, which stood at about 165 billion euros at the end of March.

Funded by the euro zone and the IMF, the HFSF is due to inject up to 50 billion euros into the country's banks in return for shares which it hopes to sell some day.

The funds are part of a second, 130-billion euro bailout Greece agreed this year with its euro zone partners and the IMF to stave off bankruptcy.

So far the HFSF has received 25 billion euros under the scheme and the 18 billion euros it disbursed on Monday is its largest payout to banks.

Key details of the recapitalisation plan for Greece's battered banking sector, including the mix of new shares and convertible bonds to be issued, and whether call options will be included as incentives, remain unclear.

That framework is expected to be finalised after a government is formed, following a June 17 election.