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Against the background of increasing corporate control there seems little that governments can do, even though there are international organisations which, presumably, were designed to deal with these issues.
The International Monetary Fund was established at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 against a world economic context of exchange rates and capital controls. For over twenty-five years capital controls continued to be lifted until the exchange-rate system collapsed completely in 1971.
Faced with a dangerous unevenness in world trade, it was the world's commercial banks that sought to assuage the continuing uncertainty, and the consequential surge in lending led to the currency crisis of 1982.
Economic de-regulation continued during the 1980s while the international lending crisis worsened. Against a background of continuing uncertainty the glut of financial instruments that had developed changed the face of banking probably for ever.
The big problem came down to the Mexican banking crisis of 1994. The government had borrowed too much and when the currency crashed it had no recourse but to seek help from the IMF and the US Treasury. Mexico issued "tesobonos" Treasury bills denominated in pesos but indexed in the US dollar and those holding them were paid up in full. It seemed the government had paid its way out of the crisis but, under the IMF-imposed economic reforms after the peso bailout in 1995, the number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty increased by more than 50 percent and the national average minimum wage fell 20 percent.
During 1997/9 a fresh crisis took hold of the international banking community. The IMF was repeatedly called upon to administer its harsh medicine in such countries as Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. This time the treatment did not work and the crisis spread until the entire global financial system was in crisis.
One result of the credit crisis of 1998 is that rich countries, as never before, were widely perceived as caring only about their own interests.
The IMF has become something of a global pawnbroker imposing savage conditions alongside emergency loan packages. According to the "Global Exchange" organisation:
"The IMF now acts as a global loan shark exerting enormous leverage over the economies of more than sixty countries. These countries have to follow the IMF's policies to get loans, international assitance and even debt relief. Thus the IMF decides how much debtor countries can spend on education, health care and environmental protection. The IMF is one of the most powerful institutions on earth - yet few know how it works."
The fact is that corporate power relies on the other supranational powers to reinforce its dominance i.e.: the IMF, the World Bank (both of which were created in 1944 at the conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire), and the World Trade Organisation which was formed in 1994.
Further south from Mexico, Brazil, the largest country in South America is beginning to put years of woeful mismanagement behind it. Brazil has welcomed in the bankers of the World Bank and the economists of the International Monetary Fund. It has fought hard to overcome years of political corruption and in-fighting and, as if to encourage it, the White House stresses that it looks forward to welcoming Brazil as a full economic trading partner. However, behind all the firm statements of commitment, the US Department of Agriculture is still slapping subsidies and quotas on two-thirds of the citrus fruits that Brazil could export to the US.
According to the Sunday Telegraph (October 2006), a plan for the wholesale privatisation of the Amazon rainforest will be raised by David Miliband, (?), the "British" Environment Secretary, at a summit meeting in Mexico in October. More fodder for the capitalist machine?
It is to be hoped that Mexico will not find herself in the same position as many other countries, enmeshed in a web from which there is no escape.
As monetary control is the key to the whole question of one world government, the more information, or alternatively a different angle on that information, that is available the better. The following sites may be of use:
For more on moneylenders: www.judom.com
For more on capitalism:www.doeda.com