Unrest has gripped Europe, the United States and Latin America. The collapse of the old economic order, the rising power of Asia and Africa, the opening up of new economic opportunities for cheated nations, all these have changed the dynamics of the international financial system.
It is laughable that some economists in Euro-American states have been basing their analysis on unreliable statistics, and Wall Street fleeting permutations. A solid study of the state of the World economy should be commissioned.
G8, G20 meetings are too ad-hoc and do not go far enough. Some of their experts suffer from ego-centric predicament.
There is need to set up a permanent international economic institution to monitor accurately the interplay between world currencies. The strengths of the YUAN and the ROUBLE now have double impact on international trade and have shaken the volatility of international liquidity.
The imperfections in the capitalist economic system has been laid bare as its monopoly practices could not stand up to competitions from Asian states, especially China, India, Malaysia, Singapore and the rising South African economy.
The major problem militating against solutions of the world’s financial disorder is the arrogant postulations of Euro-American journalists and financial analysts, who do not listen to the arguments of African-Asian economists. This one man talking and the other listening to the garrulous professor, has been the cause of the West’s economic woes.
The situation can be compared to a patient, who visits his doctor. Without asking his patient what is the nature of the sickness prescribes aspirin and lectures the patient on health-care legislation in many countries.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights insists that the people’s rights to enjoy the wealth of their nations should be respected.
Some governments devote almost half of their GDP in military research and equipment procurement. This leaves meager resources for economic and social causes. The social condition of Western man and women is gradually becoming desperate. Amidst these interlocking circles of misery, revolutionary instincts are waxing stronger as frequent strikes are on the rise.
Some governments undertake to police the world and proclaim their determination to democratize ancient regimes in Asia. This gulps up human and natural resources.
Environmental degradation has become a very important subject, so is global warning, which leads to climatic crisis. The amount of money needed for rehabilitation of broken infrastructures impact on the prosperity of nations.
China suffers from this phenomenon more than any other state. This is why they react angrily each time they are criticized that the YUAN is over-valued.
For the Chinese, corporate finance, corporate governance and corporate control are serious issues. For a state that has 1.3 billion population, debtor and creditor game is not welcome. This is why capital punishment is used to deter economic crimes.
Chinese economic policies are in self defence and so there is little space for Western philosophical analysis of legal arguments, even when claims to legal rationality are made.
Interpretations based on the rule of law, often meet with skepticism because the communist system does not use the same philosophical methods to evaluate capitalist values.
Recently, the government of Barack Obama corrected the poor perception in American society that health-care has no relationship with employment.
T here are still faulty planning theories, old development strategies and activities resulting from inappropriate economic philosophy.
Some economists have argued that investment cannot stimulate growth. The golden age of full employment, high productivity and low inflation seems to be a thing of the good old days. A war economy cannot create the smooth drive to prosperity.
The volatility in international liquidity will continue to be felt by many states that refuse to listen to others.
Perhaps, the current shaking of the world is the cyclical karmic consequences, which the Bible says will be visited upon generations upon generations.
After the collapse of the slave trade, the colonial exploitation of nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America enhanced the liquidity flow in Britain, France, Holland, Spain and Belgium.
The post colonial economic relations favoured Europe. They built the gigantic structures we all admire today in Paris, London and Amsterdam.
Today, European states seem poised to re-colonize Africa. They put out theories like “failed states” “regime change,” and other ideas they canvass during G8 and G20 meetings, where they blame the victims of their trade manipulations for not doing well economically.
They then unleash the World Bank and the IMF to intervene in “vulnerable” economies by chaining them to the debt peonage.
Partly as a result of the lack of knowledge by the officials in African ministries of finance and the subservience of some African Heads of State, who respond with smiles in agreement with the most pernicious anti-African economic policies which their former colonial “masters” prescribe, policies like SAP , find easy acceptance.
Corruption is vilified openly at conferences but it is condoned through trans-Atlantic liquidity transfers into foreign banks. These funds are later treated as cash advances that do not have to be paid back.
By some pang of conscience, Zurich no longer harbours obviously stolen wealth, deposited by African Heads of State like Mobutu Sese Sekou and Emperor Haile SelassieThe actions of many banks has checkmated the free flow of illegally acquired funds by African leaders. Also, local financial regulatory agencies try to aid transparency.
Outsourcing
The Western nations are confronted with massive unemployment because local companies are allowed to move their factories overseas, where they rake in huge profits but weaken the social stability in their own states.
I taught International economic law at Shandong University of Science and Technology, in Qingdao, China between 2005 -2008. I also gave lectures on the subject at IBIS HOTEL, Qingdao, which were well attended by American, Canadian and Chinese business people.
My studies showed how outsourcing of American and other West European companies to China quickened liquidity flow from those nations into China.
I discovered that Afro-China trade brought into China, colossal amounts of dollars and pounds. When I arrived in Beijing in December 2005, I exchanged one dollar for 9.3 Yuan. By the time I left in December 2008, one dollar exchanged for 6.7 Yuan.
The liquidity flow around the world favours China. Recently, America complained about this worrying situation but the Chinese are not likely to relent in their trade and financial practices.
In China, legal institutions like Labour Law, the Law of Contract, Antitrust Laws, Employment Law, Trade Union Rights, Intellectual Property Litigation are in the slow process of development.
A Canadian businessman, who regularly consulted me in Qingdao, China, told me that he moved his business to Qingdao in 2004. He recruited some Chinese workers, trained them and business was good. After two years, the Chinese workers started to leave the company.
Although he increased their salaries, the exodus did not abate. He later discovered that the Chinese workers had set up a similar company and were doing better! I joked that that I was what the transfer of technology was all about.
New Books
I just got two books written by the former President Jimmy Carter. He kept a White House Diary and Bob Woodward’s OBAMA’S WARS.
While Jimmy Carter catalogued in readable and interesting way, his political experience, Bob Woodward dealt more on the Washington debate on the war in Afghanistan, fashioning his approvals and disapprovals in cu
te journalistic fashion.
I had expected the renowned journalist to delve into the political economy of American war economy and the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other military engagements around the world on America’s liquidity flow, which has remained volatile and unyielding to market forces.
The European strikes in major European states, reminds one of the SPIRIT of crises, which Karl Marx predicted would engulf Europe leading to a socialist revolution world-wide.
What is going on in Europe is not exactly the collapse of the capitalist system, but a pointer to the fact, that it too, is not the perfect system. Capitalism has not taken its message to Africa, in a way that is should have. Capitalism should cooperate and collaborate with African states in a mutually beneficial way to boost its liquidity prospects. Instead ,it has carried its arrogant; know all catechism that has failed to convince its trading partners in Africa.
The Chinese have not gone to preach communism in Africa but by their trade relations, they are impacting on the continent inexorably. If one tells a Nigerian that the Chinese are now the second strongest economy in the world, manufacturing from pin to airplanes, he automatically approves of the economic system that can enhance a country’s growth so rapidly.
The volatile liquidity crunch in major capitalist states cannot be apprehended by talk-show jokes, hip hop artists, burnt-out actors, glib talk-show hosts, who are well-known for trivializing serious issues, which they probably do not understand, but by thinkers.
In most European states that I have revisited, I have observed a decline in intellectual culture. In some societies, a professor and other brain workers earn less than the” Rambling Rose”. (Nat King Cole). The hare-brained rapper can ride a Rolls Royce. The Cabaret stripper can empty the super-market. Inverted values rule the waves.
The productive intellect pours scorn on the semi-literate ranting of politicians but must feel helpless that he cannot earn his millions. The Chairman/Managing Directors of companies are now regularly quizzed by Senators without entrepreneurial acumen
Until the intellectual rigour of the West returns to lead the civilizing movement of nations, the decline will accelerate and the volatility in international liquidity will remain iron hot.
