#crises

Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of ‘the debt trap’ as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker’s interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing ‘bail-outs’ to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury–Wall Street–IMF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, ‘over fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center’. ‘What a peculiar world’, sighs Stiglitz, ‘in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest. ↗

— David Harvey

#capitalism #crises #debt #debt-crises #harvey

Have you heard a single national figure tell you all of the crises of the recent past are not economic, they're cultural? ↗

— Newt Gingrich

#cultural #economic #figure #heard #national

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism. ↗

— Andrew Lo

#consequence #crises #financial #financial crises #modern

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises. ↗

— Andre Maurois

#conflicts #crises #inconceivable #marriage #nation

And they said if we help with the crisis, they would do a lot of positive acts. After we helped in those crises, they showed negative acts and the Japanese and Turks were ashamed. ↗

— Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

#after #ashamed #crises #crisis #help

As major orchestras around the world are gripped in various kinds of crises and upheaval, we need to be sure that we are bringing up this new generation. ↗

— James Levine

#bringing #crises #generation #gripped #kinds

For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals. ↗

— Michael Rostovtzeff

#confined #crises #generals #great #historical

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises. ↗

— Lawrence Summers

#back #banking #century #crises #depression

In crises, the old is dying and the new has not been born. Hence, the revolts we are witnessing in Egypt and Tunisia, which may yet extend to other countries in the region, are full of uncertainties. ↗

— Jose Maria Aznar

#born #countries #crises #dying #egypt

He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#running