What will Money be like? The Future is Being Written Now

June 22, 2012

By AMERICANFREED | JUNE 22, 2012

Reform of monetary system … IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows … Today, the most urgent task for the G20 is reform of the international monetary system. With sharply fluctuating exchange rates, it is difficult to monitor international capital flows, identify financial risks in advance, and save the global system once a crisis happens. If the current international monetary system cannot be successfully reformed, a new great financial crisis will soon be upon us. So, the G20 should focus on its historical mission to urgently reform the international monetary system. – China Daily

Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China … “Gold is a reserve currency, as far as the market is concerned,” Sprott Asset Management’s Eric Sprott told FinancialSense Newshour’s Jim Puplava in an Oct. 2011 interview. Sprott went on to say that central banks and the shrewd money know the endgame for the dollar will include gold as the backbone of a new global monetary system—a system that presently finds China sorely lagging in gold reserves when compared with the core EU nations and the U.S … – ETF Daily News

The world’s new monetary system is being constructed as we write. You can spot the evidence in various articles, both mainstream and alternative. This article will profile two such stories.

First, there is an ETF Daily News article entitled, “Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China.”

It complements a most important article from China Daily entitled, “Reform of the Monetary System.”

Together these two recent articles may provide us with significant insights into what is REALLY going on.

According to the ETF Daily News, Western powers-that-be are secretly funneling gold to China in anticipation of a new monetary system now being constructed. China needs more gold to be part of the planned new world monetary order – or so the Daily News article suggests.

For those who believe in directed (conspiratorial) history, such a scenario is certainly believable. The global elites seem to be creating economic chaos in anticipation that they shall then be able to introduce a world currency – possibly one based on a bundle of currency and informally backed by gold.

This will not happen all at once, but will happen over time. If the euro fails, this will surely be an elite setback, but that does not mean the enterprise itself will be halted. The elites that want to run the world – and are willing to produce any amount of agony to get their way – don’t give up easily.

The globalist currency may be run by the elite-controlled International Monetary Fund and could built out of the current Special Drawing Rights (SDR) “super currency” that the IMF has been attempting to implement around the world.

The China Daily article provides us with astonishing confirmation of what may be the IMF’s role. China Daily is widely seen as a private mouthpiece of Chinese government policy.

Reading between the lines, the two articles provide further evidence that China’s top leaders – actually those secretly behind the public’s leaders – are on board with the globalist plans of Western elites.

This has been speculated about before because the paradigm that Western elites use is to ally with the people at the very top of a society. Often hostilities are commenced against such countries.

The idea is always to control the topmost leaders while positioning the opposing country as a threat in order to consolidate further domestic control.

In China, it’s been speculated that some specific dynastic families are involved in controlling that great country – and work with Western banking families such as the Rothschilds.

An alternative to this perspective is that of a three-headed shadow control that includes elements of the communist leadership (Mao was supposedly a “Soviet agent” – and the top Soviets in turn were allied with the West), the Hong Kong Tycoons (later entrants) and the Triads mafias.

This makes sense if one believes that the power players in Mainland China fled to Hong Kong during Mao’s reign and allied themselves with the Triads for purposes of developing political and criminal muscle.

Once China’s mismanagement had reached a critical level – after the failure of the Great Leap Forward – the stage was set for elite re-penetration of that vast state.

When one looks at China today, one sees a kind of Western parallel – but one that is even more extreme. The Chinese economic model is based on corrosive and inflationary central banking that has no doubt allowed elite interests to corral huge amounts of Chinese economic and industrial resources.

China is probably near the end of this particular cycle of monetary activity, with hundreds of empty skyscrapers and dozens of empty cities dotting the landscape. The ChiComs no doubt expect an implosion.

No, there will likely be no “soft landing.”  This is providing the ChiComs with a further incentive to cooperate with Western elites to create a new monetary system built out of the old, collapsing one.

The China Daily article “Reform the Monetary System” provides us with an astonishingly detailed plan for how the new world currency is to come about.

Here are some of the points:

•The IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows.

•The G20 should set up a permanent secretariat within the International Monetary Fund to improve its policymaking and implementation capabilities.

•A diversified international monetary system should consist of multiple currencies, such as the Special Drawing Rights, the US dollar, the euro and the renminbi.

• A good way to start the reforms would be to encourage the use of Special Drawing Rights for a broader range of activities and to start reducing the weight of the US dollar in the reserve currency system.

The article explains that, “such reforms would mean granting the IMF the ability to conduct open market operations as the world’s central bank.”

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Spain to receive up to 125 Billion Euros in Bailout

June 10, 2012

REUTERS | JUNE 10, 2012

Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Saturday to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to shore up its teetering banks and Madrid said it would specify precisely how much it needs once independent audits report in just over a week.

After a 2 1/2-hour conference call of the 17 finance ministers, which several sources described as heated, the Eurogroup and Madrid said the amount of the bailout would be sufficiently large to banish any doubts.

“The loan amount must cover estimated capital requirements with an additional safety margin, estimated as summing up to 100 billion euros in total,” a Eurogroup statement said.

Spain said it wanted aid for its banks but would not specify the precise amount until two independent consultancies – Oliver Wyman and Roland Berger – deliver their assessment of the banking sector’s capital needs some time before June 21.

“The Spanish government declares its intention to request European financing for the recapitalization of the Spanish banks that need it,” Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said at a news conference in Madrid.

He said the amounts needed would be manageable and that the funds requested would amply cover any needs.

A bailout for Spain’s banks, beset by bad debts since a property bubble burst, would make it the fourth country to seek assistance since Europe’s debt crisis began.

With the rescue of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and now Spain, the EU and IMF have now committed around 500 billion euros to finance European bailouts.

Washington, which is worried the euro zone crisis could drag the U.S. economy down in an election year, welcomed the announcement.

“These are important for the health of Spain’s economy and as concrete steps on the path to financial union, which is vital to the resilience of the euro area,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said.

Likewise, the Group of Seven developed nations – the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada – heralded the move as a milestone as the euro zone moves toward tighter financial and budgetary ties.

Read Full Article →

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World Bank Depopulation Plans Make Sense Now

February 16, 2012

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
February 16, 2012

Sometimes reality can stare you in the face, but you can’t see it. This is true today more than ever, even for those who fancy themselves as having an understanding of reality. The clearest example is with the masses, that seem to live in a “version of reality” that does not represent the real world. Their world is full of emptiness, distractions and selfishness. Many of us grew up inside this fake alternative version of reality, and it is hard to leave it. Millions of people have been successful in their attempt to leave the “other version” of reality and entering the real world, but most have failed. Failing to see reality has a lot to do with the human incapacity to see beyond the nose, to realize things may be different, and many times even having the knowledge isn’t enough to break loose.

Yesterday we reported on how the World Bank, together with other international organizations are responsible for promoting and carrying out a depopulation program which seeks to bring the number of human inhabitants to less than 10% of the current number. They have been implementing this program for decades now, and the efforts have been directed mainly to the underdeveloped and developing world. Their plans include sterilization of the people through modern medicine, chemicals in the food and water and population reduction plain and simple through warfare, economic policies and so on.

Unless one looks carefully at history, it is difficult to realize how these organizations have successfully carried out their agendas. But the common denominator is control. What good, or in this case bad policy does when it can’t be enforced? The people who want to get rid of humans, at least most of them, control the World Bank, the UN, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization and effectively also control the corporations which in turn dominate the governments and politicians. Indirectly, they control the educational systems, they write history to their liking, implement health, financial, environmental and demographic policies and are responsible for making sure those policies are followed at the local, and national levels without the necessary consultation to Congress or the people.

In the case of the World Bank, as we showed yesterday, it has its own plan to reduce the number of people on this planet. Many of the policies the Bank promotes appear in what it calls the World Development Report. This document has been issued once a year at least since the mid 1970′s. But how could the World Bank come up with and implement depopulation practices in many different countries? It is necessary to have people in all places, who directly or otherwise agree with such policies. It is also necessary to have people who write the policies and who pass them on to their accomplices in each nation. Although the supposed overpopulation is nothing other than a myth, many people genuinely believe the planet is out of breath when it comes to sustaining 7 billion people. Facts show a different story, though. As we have reported before, the overpopulation myth came out of Thomas Malthus’ ill-conceived theories that compared food availability and population growth. In fact, the World Bank’s 1984 World Development Report cites Malthus’ ideas as the cornerstone for global depopulation.

So how have the globalists behind the depopulation initiative been able to achieve such a goal so far? They have used the economic and military machinery from the 7 or 8 most powerful countries in the world. Specifically, the United States has been as bastion in their efforts to decrease the number of undesirables, useless eaters, as they call us. One particular detail — this is what I’ve unconsciously missed all this time — is that since its inception, the World Bank has been managed by an American politician or elitist. From Eugene Mayer to Paul Wolfowitz, every single head of the infamous organization has been a US citizen. If we connect the dots, we can easily learn that additionally to controlling the World Bank through the US, the globalists — also through the US — established another set of policies on behalf not of the World Bank, but the US itself, to use all means necessary to reduce the world’s population. I am obviously talking about the National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200) . This document was written under and least sponsored by Henry Kissinger, who back in 1974 was the US National Security Advisor.

So if a government as powerful as the US decided at the time that reducing population would be an official policy as the National Security Memorandum 200 revealed, one can only conclude that having a strong position in the World Bank would greatly help that effort. Today we know it did. But the United States influence in reducing population is not limited to the World Bank. Traditionally, it’s had its way in other agencies such as the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and of course the UN.

This week, the corporate media reported that Hillary Clinton seems to be the strongest replacement for Robert Zoellick, the current head of the World Bank who has announced his retirement. Clinton has progressively leaked her desire to leave Barack Obama’s cabinet to pursue other projects, and it seems those projects don’t include running for president of the United States — for now. Meantime, China has jumped to publicly oppose Clinton’s arrival to the presidency of the World Bank, a position that is more valuable than occupying the White House. Along with all the powers vested under the position of president of the globalist organization, there are a list of unrevealed tasks which include finger pointing who the presidents of the European countries are, a decision that just as it happens in the case of the US, is usually concocted during the Bilderberg meeting. The chinese have said that the next president of the World Bank should be someone who has earned it, a person with merit, and that the choice shouldn’t be based on nationality.

But the United States will not give away another opportunity to control world economic affairs, a tradition on its own. Clinton is only one of the American choices. Along with her is Larry Summers, also an American who served as a White House economic adviser. Summers is also a supporter of the idea of depopulating the planet. “It is very important that we continue to have strong, effective leadership in this important institution,” said the current head of the US Treasury, Timothy Geithner. According to the Associated Press, just as the World Bank president has always been an American, the IMF has always had an European head.

“We must help break the link between spiraling population growth and poverty….Where they have been tried, family planning programs have largely worked. Many pro-life advocates .. . contend that to condone abortion even implicitly is morally unconscionable. Their view is morally shortsighted. . ..if we provide funds for birth control . . .we will prevent the conception of millions of babies who would be doomed to the devastation of poverty in the underdeveloped world,” said Richard M. Nixon about the US’s new policy back then. “…a definitive interagency study of the threat of overpopulation to U.S. security … NSSM 200 details how and why world population growth threatens U.S. and global security.”

Henry Kissinger, later wrote: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.”

“Depopulation policy became the top priority under the NSC agenda, Club of Rome and U.S. policymakers like Gen. Alexander Haig, Cyrus Vance, Ed Muskie and Kissinger. According to an NSC spokesman at the time, the United States shared the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the “population crisis” is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than nuclear annihilation.In 1975, Henry Kissinger established a policy-planning group in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Population Affairs. The depopulation “GLOBAL 2000″ document for President Jimmy Carter was prepared. It is no surprise that this policy was established under President Carter with help from Kissinger and Brzezinski – all with ties to David Rockefeller. The Bush family, the Harriman family – the Wall Street business partners of Bush in financing Hitler – and the Rockefeller family are the elite of the American eugenics movement,” reports Leuren Moret.

“There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels,” said Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department’s Office of Population Affairs (OPA). “Either they [governments] do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it. “The professionals,” said Ferguson, “aren’t interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons. That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population – or else we will have trouble”.

The depopulation policies go beyond a single agency or organization. In fact, depopulation is worked through multiple organizations in order to carry out more effectively. According to Sott.net, depopulation includes practices such as hunger. “Two thirds of the world’s 1 billion starving people live in Asia, where the lack of water has resulted in unprecedented food shortages that threaten the continent’s ability to feed its growing population. Elsewhere, weird weather – chronic drought in Australia, Argentina and Kenya, excessive rain in the northeastern US, freezing summer temperatures in Canada – is contributing to the perfect storm of rising food prices and increasing scarcity, an unfolding disaster of truly pandemic proportions.”

But in most cases, famine and poverty are not consequences of overpopulation, but the manipulation of water, soil, food and other resources. One clear example is the food exchange markets, where speculators buy and sell corn, soy, and other food staples as if they were stocks. They do this not because they want to buy the food, but because there is money to make in the process of buying and selling those food crops. Most of the contracts for deliveries aren’t even completed because most buyers sell their purchases to the best bidder as soon as they see an opportunity to make a buck. And what do the traders have to say about this? “I never think about the scarcity or speculation issue when I’m on the floor.” While millions of people die of thirst or have to pay premium prices for their water supply, large food conglomerates bribe governments to acquire the water resources in many countries so then they can sell it for 3 or 4 dollars a bottle of 350ml. This situation is shown in the documentary film FLOW: Love for Water.

So the practice of depopulation either through sterilization, famine, medication, intoxication, monopolistic practices or warfare has found a fertile place in the global organizations our governments trust or follow orders from. In fact, they were created to carry out depopulation at a large scale. The practice of depopulation makes sense now. It is a concerted effort to slowly but surely get rid of as many humans as possible for the sake of whatever the controllers say it is. The problem for them is we’ve found out.


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IMF driving Poverty and Resource Monopoly in Nigeria

February 2, 2012

Nigeria and the US have one thing in common. Despite the vast natural riches that exists under their lands, the two countries “prefer” to spend billion to import the oil needed to keep the economic activity going.

by F. William Engdahl
February 2, 2012

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption, and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier, President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet crude oil—the same high-quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day.

The curious timing of IMF subsidy demand

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. The known oilfields are concentrated around the vast Niger Delta roughly between Port Harcourt and extending in the direction of Lagos, with large new finds being developed all along the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea.Nigeria’s oil is exploited and largely exported by the Anglo-American giants—Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco. Italy’s Agip also has a presence and most recently, to no one’s surprise, the Chinese state oil companies began seeking major exploration and oil infrastructure agreements with the Abuja government.

Ironically, despite the fact that Nigeria has abundant oil to earn dollar export revenue to build its domestic infrastructure, government policy has deliberately let its domestic oil refining capacity fall into ruin. The consequence has been that most of the gasoline and other refined petroleum products used to drive transportation and industry, has to be imported, despite the country’s abundant oil. In order to shield the population from the high import costs of gasoline and other refined fuels, the central government has subsidized prices.

Until January 1, 2012, that is. That was the day when, without advance warning President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan announced immediate removal of all fuel subsidies. Prices for gasoline shot up almost threefold in hours from 65 naira (35 cents of a dollar) a liter to 150 naira (93 cents). The impact rippled across the economy to everything including prices of grains and vegetables.

In justifying the move, Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi insisted that “The monies will be used in provision of social amenities and infrastructural development that will benefit Nigerians more and save the country from economic rift.”President Goodluck Jonathan says he is phasing out the subsidy as a part of a move to “clean up the Nigerian government.” If so, how he plans to proceed is anything but apparent.

The huge unexpected price hike for domestic fuel triggered nationwide protests that threatened to bring the economy to a halt by mid-January. The president deftly took the wind out of protester sails by announcing a partial rollback in prices, still leaving prices effectively double that of December. The trade union federation immediately called off the protests. Then, revealingly, Goodluck Jonathan’s government ordered the military to take to the streets to “keep order”and de facto prevent new protests. All that took place during one of the bloodiest waves of bombings and murder rampages by the terrorist Boko Haram sect creating a climate of extreme chaos.

The smoking gun of the IMF

What has been buried from international accounts of the unrest is the explicit role the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) played in the situation. With suspicious timing IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was in Nigeria days before the abrupt subsidy decision of President Jonathan. By all accounts, the IMF and the Nigerian government have been careful this time not to be blatant about openly announcing demands to end subsidies as they were in Tunisia before food protests became the trigger for that country’s Twitter putsch in 2011.

During her visit to Nigeria Lagarde said President Jonathan’s ‘Transformation Agenda’ for deregulation “is an agenda for Nigeria, driven by Nigerians. The IMF is here to support you and be a better partner for you.” Few Nigerians were convinced.On December 29 Reuters wrote, “The IMF has urged countries across West and Central Africa to cut fuel subsidies, which they say are not effective in directly aiding the poor, but do promote corruption and smuggling. The past months have seen governments in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon and Chad moving to cut state subsidies on fuel.”

Further confirming the role US and IMF pressure on the Nigerian government played, Jeffery Sachs, Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, during a meeting with President Jonathan in Nigeria in early January days after the subsidy decision, declared Jonathan’s decision to withdraw petroleum subsidy “a bold and correct policy.”

Sachs, a former Harvard economics professor, became notorious during the early 1990s for prescribing IMF “shock therapy” for Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other former communist states, which opened invaluable state assets for de facto plundering by dollar-rich western multinationals.

Even more suspicious is the manner in which Washington and the IMF are putting pressure on only select countries to end subsidies. Nigeria, whose oil today sells for the equivalent of $1 a liter or roughly $3.78 a US gallon, is far from cheap. Brunei, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia all offer their petrol very cheap to their people. The Saudis sell their oil at 17 cents, Kuwait at 22 cents. In the US gasoline averages 89 cents a liter.

That means the IMF and Washington have forced one of the poorest economies in Africa to impose a huge tax on its citizens on the implausible argument it will help eliminate corruption in the state petroleum sector. The IMF knows well that the elimination of subsidies will do nothing about corruption in high places.

Were the IMF and World Bank genuinely concerned with the health of the domestic Nigerian economy, they would have provided support for rebuilding and expanding a domestic oil refinery industry that has been allowed to rot, so that the country need no longer import refined fuels using precious state budget resources.The easiest way to do that would be to expedite a two-year-old deal between China and the Nigerian government to invest some $28 billion in massive expansion of the oil refinery sector, to eliminate need for importing foreign gasoline and other refined products.

Quite the opposite—the criminal cabal inside the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and the Government making huge profits on the old subsidy system are suddenly making double and potentially triple more to maintain the old corrupt import system, and, of course, to sabotage Chinese refinery construction that could put an end to their gravy train.

Cutting their nose to spite the face…

Rather than benefit ordinary Nigerians as the IMF proclaims to want, the elimination of the subsidies has further pauperized the 90 per cent living on less than $2 a day, according to Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Nigerian Central Bank governor. An estimated 40 million Nigerians are unemployed in the country of 148 million.

Because transport costs are a significant factor in delivery of food to the cities, food price inflation has soared along with costs of public transportation for the majority of poorer Nigerians. According to the Nigerian Leadership Sunday,“prices of commodities which shot up as a fallout of the fuel pump price increase have refused to come down.”Everything from street vegetable sellers to carwashes to roadside photographers are feeling the shock of the rise in fuel prices. Unemployment is rising as small businesses fold.

The argument of the IMF and the Jonathan administration is that by freeing fuel prices, funds would be available to more social services and rebuilding Nigeria’s “infrastructure.” Both the IMF and the government know it would have been far more economically viable to replace the current corrupt system of importing refined gasoline and fuels with investing in rebuilding Nigeria’s domestic refining capacity.

Son Gyoh of the Nigerian Awareness for Development organization asks, “Would it not be more expedient to pressure government to service the refineries to full production capacity, given the implications on overhead and competitiveness for local industries?”

Gyoh pointed to the source of the problem: “Why have successive governments left the refineries in a state of disrepair while spending huge on subsidy? Is there any chance that the savings from subsidy withdrawal will go directly into rehabilitating the refineries? Does deregulation imply NNPC will no longer operate a monopoly in importation of refined petroleum product, or is this lobby a self-serving lifeline to continue its monopoly? ” He concludes, “In any case, there is good reason to doubt subsidy removal will solve the fuel scarcity problem as the cabal will only regroup to change tactics, a fact Nigerians are only too aware of.”

After Nigeria partly nationalized its oil sector in the late 1970s, it also took control of Shell Oil’s Port Harcourt I refinery. In 1989, Port Harcourt II refinery was built. Both refineries fell into serious disrepair after 1994, when the Abacha military dictatorship cut the “take” of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company NNPC from domestic sale of refined oil products such as gasoline from 84% to 22%. That caused a cash crisis for NNPC and a halt to refinery maintenance. Today only one of four refineries operates at all.

What developed since was a system of NNPC importing foreign gasoline and other refined products for Nigeria’s domestic needs, naturally at a far more expensive cost. The price subsidies were to relieve that higher import cost, hardly a sensible solution but a very lucrative one for those corrupt elements in the state and private sector making a killing, literally, off the import process.

NNPC criminal enterprise

The IMF is well aware of the real cause of Nigeria’s fuel industry problems. A Nigerian legislative committee examining the sources of the industry’s problems recently released a report documenting that at least $4 billion annually is taken from taxpayers in fuel industry corruption with the state Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) at the center. According to the commission, “every day, fuel importers drop off 59 million liters of fuel. The country consumes 35 million liters daily. That leaves 24 million liters of oil available for smugglers to export, paid for by government fuel subsidies. This costs the Nigerian people roughly $4 billion yearly, according to Reuters.”

The Nigerian government has said that the 7.5 billion dollars spent yearly on fuel subsidies could be used to provide desperately needed infrastructure. But they omit any mention of the rampant siphoning off of $4 billion of oil by black market smugglers, reportedly with connivance of high NNPC government officials, to sell to neighboring countries at a hefty profit. The refined imported fuel is reportedly smuggled into neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger where petrol prices are far higher, according to Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, Deputy Governor of Kano State.

China as IMF target?

One major geopolitical factor that is generally ignored in recent discussion of Nigerian oil politics is the growing role of China in the country. In May 2010, only days after President Jonathan was sworn in, China signed an impressive $28.5 billion deal with his government to build three new refineries, something that in no way fits into the plans of either the IMF, or of Washington, or of the Anglo-American oil majors.

China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited (CSCEC) signed the deal to build three oil refineries with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in the biggest deal China has made with Africa. Shehu Ladan, head of NNPC, said at the signing ceremony that the added refineries would reduce the $10 billion spent annually on imported refined products. As of January 2012, the three Chinese refinery projects were still in the planning stage, reportedly blocked by the powerful vested interests gaining from the existing corrupt import system.

A report in China Daily last November quoted Nigeria’s Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, the minister of trade and investment, that Nigeria was seeking added Chinese investors for its energy, mining and agribusiness industries. Last September on a visit to Beijing, Nigeria central bank governor Lamido Sanusiannounced his country planned to invest 5 per cent to 10 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves in China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, noting that he sees the yuan becoming reserve currency. In 2010 China’s loans and exports to Nigeria exceeded $7 billion, while Nigeria exported $1 billion of crude oil, Sanusi stated.

Until now Nigeria has held some 79% of her foreign currency reserves in dollars, the rest in Euro or Sterling, all of which look dicey given their financial and debt problems. The move of a major oil producer away from dollars, added to similar moves recently by India, Japan, Russia, Iran and others, augurs bad news for the continued role of the dollar as dominant world reserve currency. Clearly some in Washington would not be happy with that.

The Chinese are also bidding to get a direct stake in Nigeria’s rich oil reserves, until now an Anglo-American domain. In July 2010, China’s CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) won four prospective oil blocks – two in the Niger Delta and two in the frontier Chad Basin, with plans to become core investor in the Kaduna refinery, and construction of a double track Lagos-Kano railway. China’s oil company, CNOOC Ltd also has a major offshore production area in Nigeria.

The IMF and Washington pressure to lift subsidies on imported fuels is at this point in question, as is the future of China in Nigeria’s energy industry. Clear is that lifting subsidies in no way will benefit Nigerians. More alarming in this context is the orchestration of a major new wave of terror killings and bombings by the mysterious and suspiciously well-armed Boko Haram. This we will look at next in the context of Nigeria’s recent transformation into a major narcotics hub.

F. William Engdahl is the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

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IMF and US African Command Join Hands in the Plunder of the African Continent

January 9, 2012 2 Comments

by Nile Bowie
Global Research
January 9, 2012

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony

Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde ordered the governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much to the dismay of the population of these nations, the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled over night without notice, causing widespread violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the interests of fraudulent foreign institutions.

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it’s people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa’s highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it’s populace.

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it’s own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria’s natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world’s most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970’s than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria’s Government, >a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government. Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets, which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes “I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended “remedies” which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan.

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon’s expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned rebel factions vying for control of the Niger Delta oil fields (the source of one of America’s top oil imports), which would potentially be secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a US-friendly coup failed to take place At a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward then went on to brazenly state the priority issue of America’s growing dependence on African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM operating under the principle theatre-goal of “combating terrorism”.

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests. After the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change conducted in Libya, nurturing economic destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible effort to secure Africa’s second largest oil reserves. During the pillage of Libya, its SFW accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American powers; it would realistic to assume that much the same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with Western interests. While agents of foreign capital have already infiltrated its government, there is little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front in the War on Terror.

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