We
have seen often the Western financial institutions to present the
"improvement" of economic indexes as a proof for the
improvement of the economy. But what about the lives of the people?
In
numerous cases, the improvement of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
a key index used by the mainstream economists, does not depict the
improvement of the lives of millions. Furthermore, the neoliberal
policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank in many regions,
proved to be a total disaster in every aspect, including the GDP and
other economic indexes. Only a characteristic example is the Russian
economy at late 90s. As Joseph Stiglitz describes in his book
Globalization and Its Discontents
:
Globalization and the introduction
of a market economy has not produced the promised results in
Russia and most of the other economies making the transition from
communism to the market. These countries were told by the West
that the new economic system would bring them unprecedented
prosperity. Instead, it brought unprecedented poverty: in many
respects, for most of the people, the market economy proved even
worse than their Communist leaders had predicted. The contrast
between Russia's transition, as engineered by the international
economic institutions, and that of China, designed by itself,
could not be greater: While in 1990 China's gross domestic product
(GDP) was 60 percent that of Russia, by the end of the decade the
numbers had been reversed. While Russia saw an unprecedented
increase in poverty, China saw an unprecedented decrease.
[...]
The radical reform strategy did not
work: gross domestic product in post-1989 Russia fell, year after
year. What had been envisioned as a short transition recession
turned into one of a decade or more. The bottom seemed never in
sight. The devastation-the loss in GDP was greater than Russia had
suffered in World War II. In the period 1940-46 the Soviet Union
industrial production fell 24 percent. In the period 1990--99,
Russian industrial production fell by almost 60 percent-even
greater than the fall in GDP (54%).
|
Daniela
Penkova in her article Bulgaria in the trap of neoliberalism, provides an interesting
information concerning the replacement of the Gross National Product
(GNP) index with the most "convenient" Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) in 1990 by the main carriers of neoliberal
globalization:
GDP was adopted by the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund in 1990 replacing the index
Gross National Product (GNP). The difference between the two
indexes is important and explains the reason for the substitution:
GDP measures the production within a territory and GNP considers
the citizenship. When a privatization is carried out, the
production is being performed on a country’s territory (and thus
is being reported as GDP) but a great part of the profit from this
production is being exported abroad thanks to the movement of the
capital. For example, if a foreign citizen buys the rights to
exploitation of a mine, he will pay only a small fee to the state
(in Bulgaria the Canadian company Dundee Precious Metals pays only
1% royalties), exporting abroad a big part of the profit. When the
mine’s profits increase, the GDP is going to rise, while GNP
will show a drop in the state’s income because the company is
Canadian. The Bulgarian national product is decreasing while at
the same time Canada’ GNP is increasing.
|
In other
words, the GDP index was inserted not only to allow the Western
institutions to present a fake improvement (yet many times
unsuccessfully as described above) for the economies who adopted the
Western neoliberal model after the fall of the Soviet Union, but also
to cover up the invasion of the Western multinationals, which made
huge profits, by exploiting natural resources at the expense of the
national economies. What we could call a new type of colonialism.
Therefore,
GDP improvement is used as an excuse for massive privatizations,
sell-off public property to the neo-colonial multinationals.
Greece
should be examined as a really special case. After six years of
devastating policies imposed by the EFD-IMF axis of destruction, the
economy has lost nearly 25% of GDP, unemployment remains at
unprecedented levels, the social state is close to collapse. Yet, the
EFD-IMF sociopaths insist on further measures, demanding an
impossible primary surplus! According to latest information, the
Brussels bureaufascists demanded additional measures to be activated
automatically, in case that the Greek government will not achieve
3.5% primary surplus by the end of 2018, which everyone knows it's
impossible.
In the Greek
case, the financial dictators do not bother to keep any pretexts
because both the numbers and the reality for millions of Greeks
destroy every attempt to present a "success story". After
Draghi's financial coup
and the intention of the IMF economic hitmen to proceed in a similar "event" in
case that the Greek government will choose to resist this time, the
neo-colonialism cannot be masked.
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