BONNIE FAULKNER: In general, what is U.S. food imperialism? How would you characterize it?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Its aim is to make America the producer of essential foods and other countries producing inessential plantation crops, while remaining dependent on the United States for grain, soy beans and basic food crops.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Does World Bank lending encourage land reform in former colonies?
MICHAEL HUDSON: No. If there is land reform, the CIA sends its assassination teams in and you have mass murder, as you had in Guatemala, Ecuador, Central America and Columbia. The World Bank is absolutely committed against land reform. When the Forgash Plan for a World Bank for Economic Acceleration was proposed in the 1950s to emphasize land reform and local-currency loans, a Chase Manhattan economist to whom the plan was submitted warned that every country that had land reform turned out to be anti-American. That killed any alternative to the World Bank.
BONNIE FAULKNER: Does the World Bank insist on client governments privatizing their public domain? If so, why, and what is the effect?
MICHAEL HUDSON: It does indeed insist on privatization, pretending that this is efficient. But what it privatizes are natural monopolies – the electrical system, the water system and other basic needs. Foreigners take over, essentially finance them with foreign debt, build the foreign debt that they build into the cost structure, and raise the cost of living and doing business in these countries, thereby crippling them economically. The effect is to prevent them from competing with the United States and its European allies.
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Майкъл Хъдсън е най-големият жиф икономист. Nuff said.
