Ireland has agreed to accept a massive infusion of bailout from the European Economic Union and the IMF, International Monetary Fund valued or estimated to be $130 billion dollars. Greece equally received hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts, earlier this year.
It is now being predicted that Portugal and then Spain, are in line to be the next recipients of bailouts from the EEU and IMF.
Bailouts and rescues are financial packages intended to create breathing space which in turn enables the bailed out nations to make necessary adjustments to avoid would have been tidal waves of financial and economic failures.
Bailouts and rescues therefore, help recipients to forestall financial and economic meltdowns following bad policy formulations and or implementations, which are frequently exacerbated by human element, the greed factor.
In the preceding two years, there have been financial and economic failures within the nations of America and Western Europe which were brought about by sharp practice and unethical behaviors in the financial markets by banking and financial institutions. Securitization of mortgages and debt equity swaps were turned into investments vehicles of the magical thinking sorts, which required suspensions of disbelief.
Banks and financial institutions in the United States were allowed to be self-policing in an era of lax in regulation regime. And this era of self-regulation led banks and financial institutions to push the limits of logic and they became self-destruct and as a consequence, brought about a global financial and economic meltdown and the ongoing global economic free-fall and spirals to a seeming bottomless pit of debts and economic strangulation.
But now that greed and corruption of a few for the benefit of a few have wrought destruction of global magnitude, with global ramifications and equally global reverberations, it is now the case that there is an onset of selective bailouts and rescues of some nations and their banks, financial institutions and their national economies.
There are patterns emerging now, which are a replay of historical economic inequities and injustices which have direct bearing, and correlation with global development and global poverty respectively.
Americans and Europeans engaged in the buying and selling of Africans, or slave trade, and when slave trade was abolished, the criminals, those who bought and sold fellow humans, were compensated by their governments as incentives or inducements to abandon their criminal enterprise, the precursor to human trafficking. But the slaves were never compensated. Freed slaves were left to their own devices. Freed slaves were left without land or resources and or compensations. There were no reparations.
Then came colonialism which was a “favor” by Christians from America and Western Europe to “savages”, native and “primitive” peoples worldwide, who needed to become “civilized” and Christianized; again, at the end of colonialism, which was either bitterly fought or negotiated, there were again, no compensations for formerly colonized peoples, instead, the economies and political processes were tied to former colonial powers, for the benefits of creation of health, wealth and happiness of former colonial powers.
The infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was similarly held by European powers to discuss the future of Africa and no African peoples were invited and the fortunes and misfortunes of Africa and Africans have not deviated from the foundational structures laid by European Colonial Powers at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885
Then came the First and Second World Wars, the Great Depression etc and at the end, of these major crises, after the Second World War in particular, America thought up, formulated and implemented the Marshall Plan, a policy which supplied food, water, orange juices, reconstruction and rebirth to Western Europe and Asia, and none of these efforts of reliefs were directed at Africans and Africa.
After these crises, Europeans were aggressively and vigorously supported or enabled to recover from the World Wars, and the Africans were left to wait for God’s divine interventions, this, even though Africans were conscripted without their consents, to fight on the sides of colonial powers.
History clearly betrays the hypocrisies of these former colonial powers. First, in colonizing others, and then, using these colonized peoples to fight wars initiated and originated by, against, and between these colonial powers for their own purposes, but making colonized peoples, fight against their wills, but, for the benefits of colonial powers, while the colonized peoples had no stakes whatsoever in the outcomes of these wars.
This is identical with the illogic of the United States in making African Americans fight foreign wars in the name of “freedoms” when in fact, African Americans were themselves denied such freedoms at home in the United States, so that, at the end of the Second World War, German War Prisoners in America had more rights on American soil than African Americans born citizens of the United States.
Similarly, African Americans were drafted and compelled to fight a foreign war in Vietnam for instance, in the name of stemming communism and upholding democracy and “freedoms” when in actual fact, African Americans were denied such freedoms in the United States.
Another instance in recent memory, which is illustrative of these permanent double standards and hypocrisies, is when the Berlin Wall fell with the implosion of Communism in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republic or the USSR.
The United States and her allies in Western Europe poured financial and material aid and assisted Russia and other nations of the former Communist Easter Bloc which afforded these former communist nations, with special and unique “logic” to the effect that without bailouts and rescues from Western Nations, the former communist nations would be danger unto themselves and the rest of the world.
Similarly, there were other bailouts and rescues for Mexico, Thailand and other Asian nations in early and middle 1990s, with the identical arguments, that, such failures to bailout these nations and their economies would have brought about dire consequences for those nations and the entire world.
It is the case that at the end of France’s colonial domination of Haiti, France extorted and exacted huge penalties against Haitians and Haiti, including the fact that Haiti was compelled to payments of millions of dollars to France!
And after that, Haiti’s fortunes have been dictated from outside of Haiti through direct interventions and subterranean manipulations. After Apartheid government was dismantled in South Africa, there was no bailout and rescue packages to put Black South Africans, the hitherto underdogs and severely disadvantaged in the South Africa economy in good stead, to enable them compete.
There were no reparations, bailouts or war crime trials.
The story is the same for Zimbabwe, despite specific Lancaster House Agreement to the contrary! Angola and Namibia other newly politically independent nations, never attracted bailouts, rescues or reparations or trials for its war criminals, who were white minorities, similar to the cases in South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. Why?
An analysis or examination of human history establishes a pattern of permanent double standards, the fact of an incontrovertible thread which connects selective bailouts and rescues for certain national economies and the failure and neglect to do same for the 53 nations of Africa and nations in the Caribbean which are populated by peoples of African descent.
The current economic conditions within Caribbean nations have not attracted bailouts and rescues. We have not heard of bailouts and rescue packages for Antigua or Bahamas, Belize or Cuba or Jamaica or Trinidad, but why?
Could it be that the economies in con
tinental Africa and within Caribbean nations are buoyant and unaffected by the current global economic crises, in comparison with say, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain etc?
This has been so, even though it is generally agreed that there have always more poverty, abject poverty in the Southern, than in the Northern hemispheres? Could this be a pointer to a history of putting more value and less value, respectively, on the lives of peoples?
What else can possibly explain why losses, through mismanagement, greed, and corruption etc deserves bailouts and rescues selectively, for some nations, and not for some others logically even more deserving in view of abject and desperate circumstances which permeates and pervades the lives of Africans and peoples of African descent.
Perhaps there are some, who are able to supply empirical data, which may establish conclusively, that continental Africans and peoples of African descent are genetically inferior and suffer from innate inability, or predisposition to mismanagement, greed and corruption, different in nature, extent and degree from their American, European and Asian counterparts.
And as a result, when these human afflictions lead to implosions and explosions of the economies of America, Asians and Europeans, bailouts and rescue packages are warranted and are thought to be in order; whereas, Africans and peoples of African descent, without cushions, social protections or safety nets, have always been neglected and abandoned historically, to wallow in extreme and terrible poverty, from which we must spare others?
What is the population of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, as compared with say, Nigeria, what for instance is the export-import base and market size of say Ireland, Greece, compared with Nigeria, given Nigeria population, it surely has a larger market than Greece and Ireland combined, and Nigeria exports crude oil, a crucial ingredient of value, in powering engine rooms worldwide, so, why is bailing out Nigeria not in the best interests of global financial and economic calculations?
These exports-imports based relationships as bases for stimulating world economies, would only be efficacious, potent and effective when nations with large populations are taken in account and consideration. There is need cultivate better relationships between peoples of all nations.
A Nigerian citizen’s quality of life can be enhanced through receipt of fair price for what Nigeria exports and in return, the Nigerian is able to participate in globalization through the enjoyment of goods and services produced in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. There are 150 million Nigerians with good incomes, purchasing powers, hence, good quality of lives, with direct benefits to producers of goods and services worldwide.
Poverty, abject poverty have been taken as if a normalcy and inevitable for Africans and peoples of African descent. Being disadvantaged and underprivileged in Nigeria is not different for African Americans or Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Haitians, there must be something in the air we breathe or the water we drink? Or we are certifiably inferior?
And then you hear of foreign aid fatigue, even though foreign aid in reality and actuality never goes to the neediest, as an example, American foreign aid, is directed to Israel, than say Haiti, Haiti which has an advertised abject human condition and has more poor people than Israel. Haiti and Jamaica have a combined population which is twice that of Israel. Aid fatigue, what aid fatigue?
In all of these bailouts and rescues, could any sane person argue that spotless, unblemished, spectacular observance of rules, laws and highest standard of ethics caused mammoth failures which necessitated bailouts for Americans, Europeans and Asians etc on the one hand? While on the other hand, greed, corruption and mismanagement of resources or such likelihood or perception of such, “explains” why African nations and nations in the Caribbeans have never received bailouts and rescues? What is the parameter for bailouts and rescues worldwide anyway?
There is a direct link, a direct connect and a correlation between endemic abject poverty among continental Africans and peoples of African descent, and the deliberate choice to refuse and neglect to offer bailouts and rescues, similar or identical with the historical bailouts and rescues for various peoples as described above.
Africans and peoples of African descent have never received bailouts, rescues or reparations, this is the evidence.
