Opinions
would hear more from Ottawa about the 2010 spending spree.
Unfortunately for North America and the world the 2008-9 financial disaster is still producing victims.
The Toronto confrontation of 2010 has shifted to Athens as Greece faces bankruptcy. This has forced it to accept EU/IMF intervention along the lines of IMF's Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP), designed by lenders to enforce repayment of loans made to nations often on tenuous grounds.
IMF has been in operation for over 30 years and invariably its SAP – how well named, and I believe deliberately so – saps the finances of targeted nations by forcing them to repay existing loans by securing new ones to pay the loan interest!
Thus the vicious cycle continues.
National impoverishment results from monetary austerities, increased taxes, reduction in government spending on services and essential programs such as education and health, privatizing government enterprises, cancelling regulations restricting foreign ownership of local assets or export of capital, allowing tax-free periods for investors, increasing raw materials exports (it is nearly always raw materials since no developed country would want imported manufactured goods to compete with its own), lower wages, depressed prices for local produce due to inevitable currency devaluation, lowering of living standards and an embittered population. The only locals who thrive in this environment are usually minions of foreign business and corrupt heads of state.
Greece is now going through this cathartic process and it hurts.
Greece must abide by Euro currency rules especially the fixed interest rate, which does not take into account variations from country to country. Its huge debt is estimated at €30,000 per person. That is about $500 billion or 150% of annual output. Last year it received a bailout of €110 billion and now needs a similar amount having repaid about half that. But nothing or very little has been done to correct the fiscal aberrations in the country, for example tax evasion, especially by the wealthy.
It would seem fair however that those who profited from or sequestered the original loan monies, in other words the super-rich, should bear the brunt of new taxation and other austerities; but it is highly unlikely that this will happen. Governments after all are run by the rich and many politicians seized their chance to fatten themselves and are not likely to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Thus they may become richer in this crisis, as Wall Street bankers have done in the aftermath of 2008-09.
Predictably, the Greek government has passed new measures to cut services and increase taxes to raise $40 billion from the poor to avoid a default in repayment.
Greece is likely to be followed by other countries of the financially embattled Euro/PIGS group – Portugal, Ireland and Spain, and several elsewhere, notably Zimbabwe - it is troubling to note that America's debt now equals its gross domestic (economic) product which means that it must make sure that China maintains its soft stance on US debt.
Americans could soon be paying up to half its national income to service debt. The US thus comes close to qualifying for seizure by the IMF and provided with a structural adjustment plan, which would be poetic justice since it helped create the IMF.
Remember the Guyana dollar that used to be worth US 42 ents and is now only .005 cents? That's a devaluation by 8,400 times, most of which occurred under IMF rules.
Everyone says that a devaluation of the American dollar is unthinkable; it is the global currency and therefore it is not in anyone's interest to push it down further than its own bankers' wrongdoings had done!
The IMF is undoubtedly a device to ensure that no government borrower defaults on loan repayments, and assumes that all loan risks are the borrower's thus unfairly absolving lenders from responsibilities for poor judgment. That would make IMF the most evil instrument of exploitation and enslavement of nations ever; it stinks of Bilderberg!
Changing times and cell phone use
I recall when I finally gave in and bought a cell phone. It was over five, more likely ten years ago. Reason why I got the cell phone was the family insisted. It was an issue of safety and convenience. I gave in. It was the sensible thing to do.
I hardly used the phone. It would go for days without a call. When the battery ran down it would beep with a remorseful, resentful tone. The sound was similar to the crapaud that sang like a poor-me-one, a moan that filled the dark nights outside my Demerara window when I was growing up back-home in Trinidad.
This sound from the phone wasn't the
happy shrilling of frogs celebrating rain. It was a pitiful cry that came from deep inside the crapaud, the pain of a poet in wordless agony. Such was the charge of the light brigade from the cell phone that I gave in and bought, at the behest of my solicitous family concerned about my safety. It was an annoying sound. It quickly trained me to ensure it was always fully charged and ready to be used.
Meanwhile around me, like everything else nowadays, cell phones were evolving as quickly as yeast multiplies in a bowl of sugar and warm water. The cell phone that I bought then wasn't exactly state-of-the-art. It had become affordable because the technology in its insides had become antiquated. This cell phone was old generation, one up from the string that held together two condensed milk tins that up to then had been the latest and the best thing in communication since the smoky fire had caused the damp blanket to burst into flames.
I grew quite attached to the tenacity of the grip of its Velcro case, its knobby keys that complained with sustained humming during unintended pocket dialing. It was handy in a dark room, serving a secondary purpose as a flashlight in helping me find the keys to the car. I used the light from its thick screen, similar to floodlights, on other occasions to help with opening the front door on those dark nights when the kids had forgotten to turn on the outside lights in the driveway. Later, much later, I understood that it was easier to call someone to the front door using speed dial than to fumble with house keys. Then the phone would be wedged between the side of my head and shoulder, both hands weighed down with grocery bags, the hungry cold chewing like wolves at my fingertips.
It was a bulky, weighty phone, with a battery the size and lead content of one found under the hood of an old Ford Cortina, or a Belmont, or an Austin Cambridge. But nonetheless, I came to understand and to appreciate its convenience. It was useful at the grocery store – I would call home and ask that the grocery list be read to me from the kitchen table where it had been left behind. Later, frustrated with these calls, the kids began texting me items on the list. I came to treasure my cell phone despite the croaking like a love-sick crapaud when it needed TLC. I learned to carry its additional bulk without resentment, like someone who must daily don a knapsack. Like the compulsory bottle of water nowadays, it became one among the items that must be carried as part of the day's baggage.
Today I wonder to myself, "What did I carry as part of the essentials when I was growing up?" I look back at my pockets then. I carried spare change as a young man growing up in Trinidad. This was essential for those extra hot days when passing by a parlour. It meant dipping into the pocket to buy a sweet drink - a sugary Solo, or a refreshing glass of ice-cold mauby and a slice of "belly-full" cake.
Then there was the comb in the back pocket, with a few teeth missing, this for a quick fixing of the part in the middle of the hair should a bevy of young ladies be spotted "down the road". The more opportunistic of the young men among my peers carried a little salt and pepper wrapped in a piece of brown paper in a side pocket. This was for those moments should a green mango, or another fruit in season, present itself as a snack.
There was the wallet in the back pocket. It contained the compulsory piece of identification, the card with the black and white photo staring back with eyes enlarged with the magnesium flash, the forehead overexposed and the national crest with the two birds glaring at each other. And a few dollar bills damp with the tropical humidity. It was a simpler existence then.
Recently, my solicitous family approached me with concern regarding my cell phone. I was no longer with the times – the phone was large as a candy bar. Not chic enough; an embarrassment in public.
My new phone uses touch technology and trills piteously, like a snared bird, when it needs charging.