Ecuador Pays Off IMF Debt, Says Will Sever Ties with Institution

From The Hearld Tribune

Ecuador's leftist president said Sunday the country has paid off its debt to the International Monetary Fund and will sever ties with the financial institution.

In a news conference in the port city Guayaquil, Rafael Correa said it was a "happy coincidence" that Ecuador made the US$9 million (€6.7 million) payment to the "international bureaucracy" the same week fellow leftist country Venezuela said it had paid off its remaining debt with the IMF and World Bank.

"We don't want to hear anything more from that international bureaucracy," Correa said, brushing off suspicions that "we are imitating brother nation Venezuela."

When he took office three months ago, Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, vowed to renegotiate the country's US$16.4 billion (€12.1 billion) foreign debt and direct resources to programs to help the poor.

Correa, a staunch ally of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, has frequently criticized the "unacceptable conditions" of IMF loans, and said Sunday that the institution has "been harmful for the country."



Argentina to Pay Off Debt Early

By Daniel Schweimler
From BBC News

Argentina has said it will pay its $10bn debt to the International Monetary Fund three years early. President Nestor Kirchner said Argentina needed control of the tools to build its independence.

His announcement came two days after Brazil, in a similar move, said it would pay off its $15bn debt.

Argentine relations with the IMF have been difficult since the country's government defaulted on a debt of over $100bn four years ago.

Millions of dollars were taken out of the country and many of Argentina's large middle class found themselves knocking on the ramshackle doors of the country's growing shanty towns.

Tens of thousands of others left to start new lives abroad.

But, against the odds, Mr Kirchner has turned things around.

Long wait
Earlier this year his government renegotiated more than $100bn of debt with private creditors and now he has said that the IMF will get the $10bn dollars it is owed by the end of the year - three years early.

The money will come from Argentina's foreign reserves and by paying off the debt they will save $1bn in interest.

The economy is growing at an impressive rate and, speaking after the president, new Economy Minister Felisa Miceli said exports were at a record high.

The head of the IMF, Rodrigo Rato, said he was sure that paying off the debt would bring positive results for Argentina.

The economic future certainly looks brighter than it did just a few years ago but it will still be some time before the benefits of this move filter down to the many Argentines living below the poverty line and to those still reeling from the crisis four years ago.


Argentina, Brazil Pay Off Debt to IMF; Bankers Nervous

By Cynthia R. Rush
From Executive Intelligence Review
2005

During the week of Dec. 11-17, the governments of Brazil and Argentina unexpectedly announced that they would pay off the balances owed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) before the end of this year. On Dec. 13, Brazilian Finance Minister Antonio Palocci told reporters that the Lula da Silva government would dip into its sizable $63 billion in reserves to pay the $15.56 billion it owed, noting this would save $900 million in interest payments. Two days later, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner announced that he would also use Central Bank reserves to pay an outstanding balance of $9.8 billion, saving $1 billion in interest payments.

While IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato nominally "welcomed" both actions, he was decidedly unenthusiastic about Argentina's decision. President Kirchner's Dec. 15 speech at the Presidential palace was a strong nationalist attack on IMF policies for plunging Argentina into poverty and indigence. His denunciation of the Fund, and assertion that by paying off the $9.8 billion, "we are burying a good portion of the ominous past of infinite indebtedness and eternal adjustment," brought the audience of business leaders, provincial governors, legislators, trade unionists, and human rights activists to their feet in an ovation.

Two members of the LaRouche Youth Movement were also present and were able to hand out copies of EIR and several of Lyndon LaRouche's strategic writings to Cabinet members and other attendees.

Rato said on Dec. 16 that he was pleased with Argentina's repayment plan, but that the country faces "important challenges and opportunities," and that the Fund stands ready to come to its assistance in meeting those challenges. In his year-end press conference a few days later, he made a point of saying that Argentina still has many "pending reforms" to be carried out, and that it would do well to follow Brazil's example of a "prudent" and "coherent" fiscal and monetary policy.

In contrast, Rato exuberantly declared that Brazil's announcement reflected the "growing strength of its external position" and "excellent track record of policy management by Brazilian authorities." The Fund, he said, "looks forward to continuing a close and constructive relationship with the Brazilian authorities."

What's the Difference?
There is no big mystery behind Rato's quite different responses to what were, on the surface, similar decisions by the two governments. As soon as he took office on Jan. 1, 2002, President Lula abandoned the anti-IMF pledges of his campaign, and with typically Brazilian pragmatism, accepted the IMF's policy dictates.

In his Dec. 13 announcement, Wall Street agent Palocci, along with fellow financial predator Henrique Meirelles, president of Brazil's Central Bank, attributed the government's ability to make this prepayment to the success of the orthodox IMF policies they have enforced for the last three years.

Not so with Kirchner. The debt owed the IMF "has been a constant vehicle for interference, because it is subject to periodic review and is a source of demands and more demands," he said. "The International Monetary Fund has acted toward our country as a promotor of, and vehicle for, policies which provoked poverty and pain among the Argentine people, at the hand of governments that were lauded as exemplary students of permanent adjustment. Our people can corroborate that."

The experience of Argentina's Dec. 23, 2001 default on $88 billion in public debt, and the devastating crisis that ensued, is sufficient proof, he noted, "that that international agency first backed real political failures"—the currency board policies of the 1990s—and then "wouldn't give one penny of aid to [help us] overcome the crisis or to restructure the debt."

For a long time, Kirchner explained, "we have been instructed in impotence and told that we can't do anything.... They wanted to instill in our soul the certainty that reality is untouchable.... They wanted to make us believe that not to do anything new is the only realistic option." But now, he warned, the Argentine President will use his "popular mandate" to act as a protagonist, in the best interests of Argentina's people.

It's the Global System
Despite their economic policy differences, the process involving Argentina and Brazil is complex, precisely because of the existing conditions of global financial meltdown, combined with the political upheaval taking place in Washington, D.C.

Lyndon LaRouche remarked on Dec. 16 that Ibero-American governments all know that the Bush Administration is not in the greatest shape, and they are taking steps to free themselves of as many sources of threat as possible, and get some degree of management over their own affairs. While prepayment to the IMF may take the form of a concession, he said, these are concessions to end concessions. "They are saying, 'We did this nice thing by paying you. You demanded it; now why don't you be reasonable?' "

Moreover, LaRouche explained, the very interesting aspect to this is that the IMF is no longer the creditor. There is a fiduciary relationship between the IMF and these countries, but no such relationship exists between debtors and private interests, many of whose alleged debts are of very dubious character. So, the ability to impose regulation on these countries' internal balances is ended, LaRouche underscored. "None of these creditors has the power to demand—that is, with the force of regulatory authority—that the debtors obey." They have no judicial authority.

This makes synarchist financier interests very nervous. They don't like the reports that the Brazilian and Argentine Presidents discussed their actions beforehand, first at their bilateral meeting Nov. 30 in Puerto Iguazú, Brazil, and then with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez during the Dec. 8-9 Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) summit in Uruguay. Chávez's role in this decision was to agree to substantially increase his purchase of Argentina's public debt bonds, for which Kirchner thanked him in his Dec. 15 speech.

Reflecting the concerns of the synarchists, London's Financial Times fretted in its Dec. 16 edition that repayment by "two large borrowers" like Brazil and Argentina "raises fresh questions about how the Fund will pay for its operations at a time of low demand for its loans."

'Harmonization of Interests'
In the current global context, financiers are fearful that the "heterodox" policy path that President Kirchner has outlined, especially in the wake of his solid victory in the Oct. 23 midterm elections, could affect developments in Brazil, where there is a raging brawl taking place over IMF policy. Members of Lula's own Cabinet—Vice President José Alencar, Chief of Staff Dilma Rouseff, and Industry and Trade Minister Luiz Furlan, among others—have publicly attacked the Palocci/Meirelles duo for savaging real production and living standards, with their lunatic policies of 18.75% interest rates and a primary budget surplus equivalent to 4.25% of Gross Domestic Product.

When the Argentine President fired Finance Minister Roberto Lavagna on Nov. 28 and replaced him with economist Felisa Miceli, president since 2003 of the state-run Banco de la Nación, it set off alarm bells at the IMF and among allied banking circles. Miceli had experience in devising state financing programs for public development projects, and unlike Lavagna, didn't buy the idea that orthodox austerity measures were the only way to combat Argentina's increasing inflation.

The Cabinet change was scrutinized carefully in Brazil. According to the Dec. 3 Brazilian daily O Globo, when IMF Deputy Managing Director Anne Krueger visited Brasilia on Dec. 1, she worriedly asked everyone she met, "Do you know anything about Felisa Miceli? Where she came from, and where she's going?" O Globo's columnist asked whether Miceli would become "the Dilma Roussef of the land of Kirchner," alluding to the firestorm that Lula's Chief of Staff set off on Nov. 9, with her barrage against her government's economic policy.

Argentina's state press agency Télam published on its website this author's article from EIR of Dec. 9, which includes LaRouche's analysis of, and support for, Kirchner's dumping of Lavagna.

To the horror of foreign bankers and free-marketeers, Kirchner and Miceli have not only become "interventionist," but have echoed the "harmony of interests" concept most identified with the great 19th-Century American System economist Henry C. Carey. Miceli used the term "harmonization of interests" on Dec. 2 in discussing price-reduction agreements reached with representatives of different economic sectors.

On Dec. 7, Kirchner told business leaders that he would fight growing inflation, not by imposing the IMF's recommended austerity measures, but by issuing a $1.5 billion credit line through the Banco de la Nación, for productive investment in purchase of capital goods for industry and agriculture. The ten-year loans carry subsidized interest rates.

But he also told the businessmen that they had a great "social responsibility" to ensure that their profit levels are balanced with protecting the General Welfare. "There are methodologies," he said, "that will allow us to reconcile interests, such that those who stay at home, those who work hard, will absolutely be protected by a responsible State," and by business, "with the responsible support" of workers and their organizations.



CIA, Drugs, and Wall Street (Excerpt)

By Michael C. Ruppert
From From the Wilderness.com
1999

I have been saying for years that you could show a video of George Bush ordering drug runs, CIA agents laundering money and flying airplanes full of drugs and no one in power would do anything about it. They would not be able to. In this issue I will tell you, and the House, about something almost as damning - a partially authenticated letter, written on CIA letterhead and stamped "Top Secret", ostensibly written and signed by CIA Director William J. Casey in late 1986, that admits to direct participation in the drug trade.

I have been aware of the existence of this letter for approximately five months. I have had it read to me in its entirety. It was not until I was given this last chance by HPSCI to present "all of the information of which you are aware on the allegations" that I was able to obtain an "On the Record" statement about the letter from Attorney Ray Kohlman. The letter will be admitted into evidence in a new trial motion for former Green Beret William Tyree in the near future. When that happens, From The Wilderness will publish the letter, both on the Internet and in the newsletter.

Now that the House has indicated its intent to close the matter for good and all it is time to bring the letter forward - for good and all. I will also see to it that the letter is widely distributed enough so that any of the major news organizations will be able to follow up on it. The information in this issue is enough for the House Intelligence Committee to go to the CIA and compel it to confirm or deny the letter's authenticity. If nothing happens with further hearings, or with the letter, I will tell you in advance exactly why.

Reading The Right Map
Contributing Editor Catherine Austin Fitts, who was a Managing Director at Dillon Read before becoming Assistant Secretary of Housing under George Bush and who holds an MBA from Wharton makes things very simple. She points out that the four largest states for the importation of drugs are New York, Florida, Texas and California. She then points out that the top four money laundering states in the U.S. (good for between 100 and 260 billion per year) are New York, Florida, Texas and California. No surprise there. Then she rips the breath from your lungs by pointing out that 80 per cent of all Presidential campaign funds come from - New York, Florida, Texas and California.

Civics test: Who are the current governors of Texas and Florida?
From The Wilderness has been working on a story for an upcoming issue that will show conclusively, using testimony of law enforcement officers and U.S. Government records, that Dominican drug gangs, who dominate the trade in the northeast United States - especially New York and Pennsylvania - have been making regular campaign donations to the Clinton-Gore-Democratic camp since the early 90s. California drug sales are currently split between Democratically allied crime factions and entrenched hard core Republican strongholds from the Reagan era. People who shudder at the thought of the Chinese buying into presidential politics would choke if they knew how much drug money was involved.

Why? Again, the answer is simpler than you might think. While the Department of Justice estimates that $100 billion in drug funds are laundered in the U.S. each year, other research, including research material from the Andean Commission of Jurists cited by author Dan Russell in his soon to be published book Drug War place the figure at around $250 billion per year. Catherine Austin Fitts places the figure at $250 to $300 billion. Given the fact that the UN estimated that in the early 1990s world retail volume in the illegal drugs was $440 billion, $250 billion seems about right. Fitts, using her Wall Street experience as an investment banker is then quick to point out that the multiplier effect (x6) of $250 billion laundered would result in $1.5 trillion dollars per year in U.S. cash transactions resulting from the drug trade. How many jobs does $1.5 trillion represent? Why do President's get re-elected? As Bill Clinton's staff recognized in 1992, "It's the economy -Stupid!"

During the Contra years, when the CIA and Bill Clinton were swimming in cocaine, and Arkansas became the only state in the Union to ever issue bearer bonds (laundry certificates), employment in Arkansas rose to an all time high because there was so much money floating around. So what if they donÕt count all the dead bodies like two young boys Kevin Ives and Don Henry, shot, bludgeoned and dismembered on a railroad track after witnessing CIA drug drops. "It's the economy - Stupid!"

The Pop
Corporations trading on Wall Street, including many implicated in money laundering schemes where products are sold with questionable bookkeeping throughout drug producing regions, all have stock values that are based upon annual net profits. Known as "price to earnings" or "The Pop" the multiplier effect in stock values is sometimes as much as a factor of thirty.

Thus, for a firm like GE or Piper Aircraft to have an additional $10 million in net profits based upon the drug trade, the net increase in these companies' stock value could be as much as $300,000,000. Did GE make a $10 million net profit on consumer products in Latin America last year? Easily. And since GE owns NBC is there a chance that accurate reporting on the drug trade and CIA's involvement therein might hurt their stock?

Disney owns ABC and has a huge retail, resort and entertainment empire that benefits from the "drug multiplier." Would ABC consider hurting its parent's stock value? Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, William Casey had been Chief Counsel to Cap Cities Broadcasting until 1981. His old law firm represented Cap Cities when it bought the ABC network in 1985. ABC's Peter Jennings, by the way, had been doing a series of investigative reports on the CIA drug bank (and successor to the Nugan Hand bank) Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong when the buyout was initiated. Cap Cities (not surprisingly) secured SEC approval in record time and effectively and immediately silenced Peter Jennings who had previously refused to back down from Casey's threats. Thereafter ABC was referred to as "The CIA network."

I have no doubt that the ABC "object lesson" was front and center for CNN founder Ted Turner and Time-Warner when Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and (CIA vet) John Singlaub put the pressure on in the wake of April Oliver's 1998 "dead bang accurate" Sarin gas stories connecting CIA to the killing of American defectors.

Every major media corporation in the country trades on Wall Street. There are no "independents" left and the American people are left with the increasing cognitive dissonance of recognizing that they are being fed useless bullshit. I wonder how they would respond to real a news corporation if they saw or heard one.

It's Legal to be Bad
It is also perfectly legal for a Wall Street brokerage or investment bank to go "offshore" and borrow once laundered drug money to finance a corporate merger or leveraged buyout (LBO). Why do this? If you were a major multi-national corporation in a cutthroat competition to buy a company with a hundred million in sales (which might boost your stock value $3 billion) you would be willing to pay a seemingly outrageous price. [How much would you be willing to spend to make $3 billion? - 2.9?]. All an LBO is is an acquisition financed on borrowed money. If you are Goldman-Sachs, arranging the deal, and you can borrow laundered drug money at five per cent or a bank's money at ten per cent where are you going to go? Remember that since the cost of capital is lower using laundered drug money you are now able to outbid all the other competitors because your total payback stays the same. Does this actually happen? In 1998 the Russians asked for only $18 billion to save their entire economy. With $440 billion a year moving around how could it not happen?

And a major drug dealer, like a Carlos Lehder, a Pablo Escobar, an Amado Fuentes, a Matta Ballesteros or a Hank Rohn, sitting around with ten billion dollars of useless illegal money, is more than happy to loan it at five percent because his money is now legal and liquid. And, if one goes to prison or dies, there is always another dealer to fill the void so that the supply is not interrupted. The drug trade now has power because it is underwriting the investments of the largest corporations in the world. It underwrites politicians. It has hooked the gringos on Wall Street whose own children sometimes die from its drugs. Wall Street cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Congress cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Presidents and their campaign finances cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Why? Because our top down economy, controlled by one per cent, cannot take the risk of letting competition (business or political) have the edge of using drug money. The third world has its revenge for European colonialism but Wall Street still calls the shots. And for every million dollars of increased sales or increased revenues from a buyout, the stock equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to thirty times.

Remember - The National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA, was written by Wall Street lawyer and banker Clark Clifford. Clark Clifford is the man who brought the CIA backed drug bank BCCI into the United States. Allen Dulles who virtually designed the CIA and served as its Director, and his brother John Foster who was Eisenhower's Secretary of State, were Wall Street lawyers from the firm Sullivan and Cromwell. Dwight Eisenhower's personal liaison with the CIA was none other than Nelson Rockefeller. William Casey was Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Richard Nixon. Former CIA Directors from William Raborn to William Webster to Robert Gates to James Woolsey to John Deutch all sit or have sat on the Boards of the largest, richest and most powerful companies in America.

As we near the millenium one thing is clear to anyone who sees the economic system clearly. The system is on the verge of implosion. Privately owned and operated prison companies trade on Wall Street. One of those, Wackenhut, is a virtual CIA proprietary. We have entered, at the end of the industrial age, a phase of growth where we must incarcerate an ever expanding number of people to sustain the growth of all the companies profiting from law enforcement, crime, imprisonment and war. And the overheated stock market must grow or collapse. The reason this nation spends five dollars on prisons for every one dollar on higher education - even after seven straight years of falling crime rates - is because there is more profit in it in the current economic model. Hell, we have turned police departments into profit making entities through asset forfeiture. This is insane!

This economic model is patently no more sustainable than a snake eating its own tail can be considered nourishment. Organized crime has become the government and it seeks to make all citizens become subliminally guilty participants, fearing for their own livelihoods, believing that the system will collapse if someone really tackles the issues facing us - as surely as the iceberg faced the Titanic.

The system will collapse anyway - unless the economic model is turned upside down - unless a way is found or offered which will make it more profitable than all other ways - to do the right thing. The only thing that will sustain the current economic system, and its dependence on drug capital, is a police state. New enforcement programs involving HUD and the Department of Justice such as Project "Safe Streets" and "Weed and Seed" - along with their corresponding butchery of the Constitution - show an emerging police state already. The conduct of Congress and the White House in the CIA drug investigations further demonstrate the arrogance, the fear and the ever-increasing sloppiness of a system out of control.

The veneer, the illusion that we live under the rule of law cracks before our eyes, grows thinner and ever more difficult to sell with each passing minute. All at once the fears of the right of a New World Order and the fears of the left, of new concentration camps and genocide suddenly become one and the same thing. Dogma matters little to the oppressed. Pain tastes the same whether you call it Fascism or Communism. Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, co-founder of the Medellin Cartel, who was given a life sentence in 1990, now enjoys the sunshine at his home in the Bahamas. He frolics regularly with gaming magnate and owner of the Atlantis Hotel Sol Kerzner. His guests at parties include Kevin Costner who played (I am sorry to say) both Elliot Ness and Jim Garrison. Manuel Noriega will probably be out of prison before Bill Clinton leaves office. The Kosovo Liberation Army has been funded with drug money and has trained with Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden. The son of a documented drug trafficker, who very few people in this country even know anything about, is "scheduled" to become our next President, simply because he has the most money and he and his backers control most of "The Pop."

How much time can this government have? How much time does it deserve? Bill Clinton's Farewell Address should probably be, "Apres moi, le deluge."


If you want to know MORE about this subject,
may we recommend the following:
- Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.
- CIA Drugs and the Impeachment (video)
- The Salon at Fraser Court (5/99)



Self-Publishing: A Proud Tradition, A Promising Future

By Brent Erickson
From Plus Ultra

In 1989, James (then 39) quit his job as a therapist to work on his book full-time. Drawing on his interest in Psychology, Eastern Philosophy, Ecology, and History, he completed what he believed to be a fine first novel.

James began sending his manuscript to publishers in 1992. He received a few cautious offers, but they did not feel right to the aspiring novelist, so he decided to self-publish the book. With the help of his wife Salle, James sold his novel out of the trunk of their car. “Of the first 3,000 copies we printed, we mailed or personally gave away 1,500 to small book shops and individuals…” recalls James, “Word of mouth recommendations took care of everything else.”

Thanks to grassroots enthusiasm for his novel James's book was soon picked up by a major publisher. The Celestine Prophecy was published in hard cover in 1994, As of 2005, it had sold over 20 million copies worldwide and had been translated into 34 languages, making James Redfield a household name.

Though the story of James Redfield and The Celestine Prophecy is an extreme success story, a surprising number of authors got their start as self-publishers. The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. was originally self-published for his classes at Cornell University. Twelve Golden Threads by Aliske Webb was rejected by 150 publishers, but after self-publishing and selling 25,000 copies, Webb signed a four-book contract with HarperCollins. A Time to Kill by John Grisham was self-published, and like James Redfield, Grisham sold his first novel from the trunk of his car.

The List of authors who began as self-publishers reads like a who’s who of classic writers, giving historical context to a practice often looked down upon by the mainstream literary world. Virginia Wolff, E.E. Cummings, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Irma Rombauer, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, Mary Baker Eddy, William E.B. Dubois, Mark Twain, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, George Bernard Shaw, and Anais Nin all had to prove themselves with self-publishing before being picked up by the major publishers.

Today, thanks to modern technology aspiring authors have more tools available to them then their predecessors could ever have dreamed of. Three of the most promising developments for self-publishing in modern times are, Desktop Publishing programs, Print on Demand method of publishing, and the Blogging revolution.

With a personal computer, printer and affordable desktop publishing software, writers can create high quality publications complete with visual elements all from the comfort of their homes.

Print on demand or POD is a methodology in which a copy of the book is not created until after an order is received. This style of publishing was impossible in the past due to the costs involved, but now because of low printing costs it is a fast growing way to sell the works of young writers.

The term blog is derived from the words Web-log but blogging is more than,what has come to be called, “Vanity publishing”. With millions of people surfing the net everyday a blog is a method of self-publishing that holds a lot of potential for young writers.

Free web space, affordable programs, print on demand method, all that is missing now is the next James Redfield. Start making room in the trunk!