(Hat tip to Patrick Bond for establishing the Goldman-Sachs/BRICS bromance in last night's talk at the Rosa Luxemburg conference in NYC.)
The establishment of a development bank by the BRICS association of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is being described by both proponents and opponents of globalization as a rebellion against the hegemony of the U.S. dollar and a challenge to globalization by “emerging economies.” How accurate is this description? The concept of BRICS was mooted within the ranks of globalist big-player Goldman Sachs. The premises of the development bank seem close to globalist recommendations for world economic reform. Could BRICS be another avenue for global capital to penetrate the “emerging economies” behind the façade of “development assistance”? Is the bank a means of integrating Russia into a global economy by distorting the Russian vision of “Eurasia,” like the vision of “Europe” was manipulated by plutocrats? BRICS and Goldman Sachs China has long figured in Goldman Sachs estimates for investment. China is regarded by Goldman Sachs as pivotal to a new world economic order. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein recently told a conference hosted by the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University that China will become the underwriter of a “world economic order” and he welcomes China’s expanded role. Institutions such as Tsinghua University, which has a long and close relationship with Goldman Sachs, and from where GS interns are drawn, are part of a global interlocking relationship that transcends politics. Blankfein in his dialogue with Qian Yingyi, dean of economics and management at the university, refers to the unfortunate political roadblocks that have to be overcome in expanding this new “world order” (sic). One of the primary obstacles, to which Blankfein refers, is organized labor, which has tried to resist the de-industrialization of the West and the exporting the jobs.[1] Mark Schwartz, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs and chairman of GS Asia Pacific, enthuses on China deregulating interest rates, liberalizing currency, “engaging globally,” and negotiating a bilateral investment treaty with the USA.[2] The BRICS development bank contains the humanitarian elements that are often promoted as a façade for predatory international capital. China is as much part of predatory capital as the USA or Britain, with its stocks and bonds, and investments and sharemarkets, borrowing and lending, as any other major capitalist state. China is however still in a unique position to serve as the means by which international capital, as epitomized by Goldman Sachs, can reach into hitherto difficult economies, in the name of development capital. Hence so far from a “Eurasian union” acting as an autarchic bloc, which has been gaining influence in Russia, perhaps BRIC is the means of derailing such a concept and transforming it into an integral part of the “world order.” This is the reason why U.S. based interests had avidly promoted the European Economic Community and what has become the European Union. With Russia integrated into the scheme, might it not also be a means by which this perennial wild-card is brought to heel? Russia stood as a potential rival to international capital in Central Asia, but as part of BRICS, which in turn is part of the “world order,” it becomes a very junior partner full: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/07/14/brics-development-bank-an-instrument-for-globalization/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
