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'When I asked, naïvely, why the World Bank, a quasi-aid organisation, would push loans that were unwelcome or controversial, I was reminded that "the World Bank is a bank. Selling loans is its business." "It also has the job," someone said "of creating the conditions in which private banks can make profitable loans."{emph. added}
Since no bank could collect interest from subsistence fishermen (they stop when they have enough), some in the group {of first- and third-world ecology activists at a UN Shrimp Tribunal} felt that all World Bank loans were ultimately aimed at opening new loan markets by destabilizing what was left in the world of self-sufficient communities and turning their inhabitants into dependent individuals. In other words, self-sufficient people were deliberately pushed off the land to make way for borrowing, interest-paying investors. If those people happened to starve before enough investors materialized to provide them with cash income, then they died of unexploitability.'
Barbara Garson, Money Makes The World Go Round.
If you've ever wondered how globalised money works, buy a copy of this book. It went out of print quickly of course, but it's still available from remainder sellers. You'll come away with a better understanding of economics, bubbles, and globalisation tragedies. She bends over backwards to be fair, but she also doesn't hide or gloss over the ignorance, uncaring self-interest, and predation she runs into.
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