US President George W. Bush and president-elect Barack Obama make their way through the Colonnade on November 10, 208 to a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. Obama was visiting the White House at the invitation of Bush ahead of his January 20, 2009 inauguration as the next president.
By Cliff Kincaid
The bankruptcy of Iceland, now receiving a $2.1 billion two-year loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “to support an economic recovery program,” has been depicted as something that could never happen to America. Is the U.S. too big to fail? Or is the U.S. going through the same process, albeit on a slower basis?
Will we wake up to discover that America is now a bit player in a “New World Order” dominated by China, rich Arab nations, and international institutions?
The politicians from both major U.S. political parties are attempting, with the help of the media, to mask what is happening by passing what they call a financial “rescue” and economic “stimulus” packages. The word “stimulus” is sort of like “rescue.” This is actually a process of piling up more debt and spending on top of more debt and spending. This puts us more at the mercy of those who decide to lend us money.
On November 15, the crisis goes global, as the Bush White House hosts an “international summit” designed, in the words of some of those participating, to create new “international financial architecture.” This means increasing the power and financial resources of international agencies like the IMF, possibly by implementing global taxes on the U.S. and other nations.
Anticipating the event, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the current turmoil in the world economy offers a chance to build a “new global order” based on cooperation and opportunity. Brown summarized his approach as “internationalist, interventionist and progressive,” says a release from his office.
And all of this is happening under a “conservative” U.S. President by the name of George W. Bush.
Many of those attending the Washington, D.C. event will be associated with the Socialist International, which issued a statement calling for the new international financial architecture to include a World Financial Organization. A World Tax Organization can be expected to follow. It has been on the U.N. drawing board for years.
The first meeting of the Socialist International Commission on Global Financial Issues was held in Vienna, Austria, on November 3, and suggested “tackling the issue of insufficient financial resources in multilateral institutions and regional development banks by seeking new sources of funding and lending facilities, as well as more fundamental reforms in the global economic governance.” This is bureaucratic doublespeak for finding new foreign aid money, possibly through a global tax, and cutting the U.S. down to size economically.
One of the key members of this Socialist International commission is Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a “revolutionary” economist who was named by Miguel D’Escoto, the new Marxist President of the U.N. General Assembly, to run a U.N. task force on international financial matters. Stiglitz, a key player in the emerging “New Global Order,” wrote a Sunday Washington Post article urging more foreign aid spending, a new global warming treaty reducing U.S. use of energy, and an expensive carbon tax on Americans.
On October 13, Stiglitz was among a group of economists meeting with Democratic politicians on Capitol Hill to devise their new economic “stimulus” plan. Obama says he wants this “stimulus” as soon as possible.
In a release from the World Economic Forum, Suzanne Nora Johnson, Senior Director of Goldman Sachs, USA, and a Trustee of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, declared that the Washington summit “gives us great opportunities to find solutions and new ways of looking at the world.” Johnson says that, while there has been “protectionist reaction” in the U.S. to sovereign wealth fund investments, as a result of the liquidity crisis there would now be greater openness to such deals. Sovereign Wealth Funds are government financial entities based in China and several Arab/Muslim states.
Aftermath News 
