As Irish papers called yesterday's bailout of inter-Alpha banks of England "the biggest political betrayal in Irish history" and as Portugal, Spain, Italy are struggling to avoid future IMF bail-out packages, former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad recently published a memo raising important questions about current global monetary situation. The memo has been derived from http://www.worldribaconference.org website. I have added a part of recent Dominique Strauss-Kahn's -Managing Director of IMF- speech at the European Banking Congress, which took place in Frankfurt couple days ago at the end.
By: Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
1. Malaysians, including Malaysian monetary authorities seem quite happy over the appreciation of the Ringgit against the US Dollar. We think that when our currency strengthens it must be because our economy is strong, Therefore we are doing well.
2. But are we doing well? Is it the Ringgit which is appreciating or is it the US Dollar which is devaluing?
3. Actually it is the US Dollar which is devaluing. It is devaluing against most other currencies, especially against China's currency.
4. Why is the dollar devaluing? Could it be due to the currency traders selling dollars? Could it be because the balance of payment is not in US favour?
5. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, an expert on money have this to say. There is a global currency battle going on. "To put it crudely," he says, "the US wants to inflate the rest of the world, while the latter is trying to deflate the US. The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition; there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create. What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world's surrender; the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world.
6. Our reserves are represented by the US Dollar, gold and other currencies which we keep in order to back the value of our Ringgit, The US clearly does not have to hold foreign currencies to back the Dollar. All the US has to is to create (print) money.
7. When we buy US Dollar bonds, we are in fact lending US Dollars to the US. When we redeem the bonds all the US has to do is to print more US Dollars to pay us.
8.How nice it would be if we can pay all our debts by just printing money.
9. There is something fishy going on and the fishy smell is very strong in the US. "Poor" China with 2.5 trillion devalued dollars in its reserve. Wonder how much Bank Negara has?
10. In the face of Governments devaluing their currencies in a currency war, what should Malaysia do? Keep the float or control? When we controlled our currency in 1998 we were called pariahs whose knowledge about finance could be wriiten on the back of a postage stamp. Now it seems many nations are using their magnifying glasses to read what is written on the back of the postage stamps. -ends-
In short, global economic governance will set the ground for social and political global governance to follow and dawn of a new era:
Since the time of Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth President of the United States, there has been many public relations firms involved in the packaging and selling of the wars. These people mainly known as information warriors and perception managers are at the frontier of the propaganda assault that helps sell the war . They are usually fairly closed-mouth about their works but on occasions they give on speeches and in one speech that one of these people gave to US naval cadets, he told the story. He said, " do you remember at the end of the first Gulf war in Iraq how you saw Kuwaitis lined up waving American flags on television as they are greeting American soldiers coming in to Kuwait? Did you ever wondered how those flags ended up in their hands?... That was my job back then ! "
So this tells us those *iconic moments* you see on television of people watch, and they think this tells us the meaning of what is happening in this world, those don't happen by accident. There is someone carefully scripting and staging things and making sure that little flags end to their hands of Kuwaitis to wave them! Lets revisit this 3 minute clip:
That was about this white house spin doctor who hires a Hollywood producer to invent a war in order to divert attention away from the US presidential sex scandal. It is the storyline of the movie "Wag the Dog" released in 1997 or its rather about the cynical view of American foreign policy.
We live in a time where what matters is not necessarily the truth but something that could be close enough to the truth so that people would buy it - at least for a while. Therefore, much of the kind of communication which we deal with everyday, is strategic rather than genuine. As a result of this, organizations and corporations don’t say what they really think; they say what they think can make them look good. In other words, these days we are not used to hearing people lie so unashamedly but we have become very accustomed to hearing a special language which is called spin.
Spin is about assuring that the product, policy or person you have been hired to promote is positively perceived by the Media. In public relations, not only spin is about reputation management but also is about persuading people to agree with a point of view, hopefully, because the PR person believes that his/her point of view is actually based on logic and facts and its true!
Spin can be assumed as a ‘practice of eloquence’ or 'an alternative way to telling and writing lies'. Though in this case, to put it simply, spin is synonymous with distorting, lying and confusing which Donald Rumsfeld, undeniably has been the poster boy. Watch this:
That is called the art of replying to a question without even going close to answering it or the deliberate shading of news perception: Spin.
" Surely God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition (what is in their hearts) ; if God willeth misfortune for a folk there is none that can repel it, nor have they a defender beside Him " (The Thunder: 11, Quran).
Over the last five decades, we have witnessed a wave of US military interventions; a series of bombings, invasions, and long-term occupations. Undertaken we have been told, by one president after another, with the most noble of intentions and paid for with the lives of Americans and countless other innocent people around the world. What has occurred with one war after another, is still with us. These dynamics are in play in terms of the US occupation of Iraq, looking at other countries such as Iran and Syria, and the future will be replicated to the extent that we fail to understand, what has been done with these wars in the past.
The news media have generally bought into and promoted the notion that it's up to the President to make foreign policy decisions. This smart guy in the oval office has access to all the information, he knows more than we do, he's the commander in chief and the American people have no major role to play and nor should they because after all they don't have the knowledge or capability to be responsive to the real situation. Watch this:
That was certainly true during the Vietnam War as it was to be later time after time. There were people in Congress who raised these issues and they simply were marginalized by the news media even though in retrospect, maybe especially because in retrospect, they had it right and the conventional wisdom and the President were wrong:
And this is a very common motif of history in the last several decades where people who at the time were portrayed as loners, as mavericks, as outside of the mainstream of wisdom turned out to understand the historical moment.
