The Hypocrisy of The West

With the financial meltdown in full swing, western governments are
swinging into action to revive their economies with massive stimulus
bills and spending programs. Financial institutions too big to fail are
receiving bucket loads of cash, while a multitude of industries wait
for their piece of the pie. Obama is proposing huge investments in
infrastructure and green jobs, while Gordon Brown and the EU promise
much the same.

The West responds to economic crises with swift government
intervention, while it tells Third World Nations to do the opposite.
'Structural Adjustment' was the phrase coined by the IMF and World Bank
-- a technocratic word to describe the gutting of public institutions
in the countries they were supposed to help. Third World countries were
ordered to cut government spending, allow private companies to take
over state functions (like providing water, electricity and education),
and borrow at extremely high interest rates. The results were
catastrophic, and countries like Brazil, Chile, and Nicaragua were
plunged into economic hell. Hyperinflation, mass unemployment, poverty
and food insecurity soared while deficits multiplied exponentially.

The West insisted this was the best road to economic prosperity,
ignoring the inconvenient truth -- that they had not taken their own
advice.

Central planning, protectionism and corporate welfare created the
societies we live in today -- the power of capitalism to create wealth
by itself was nothing more than a myth, a weapon the rich would use to
lecture the poor. You live in the jungle of savage capitalism while we
use the state to build our businesses and solidify our wealth.

The ideologues insisted that neo liberalism worked, ramming it down
the throats of their own countries with the same religious fervor.
Wealth was created, but only at the top, while the rest of the country
crumbled. The financial tsunami that wrecked Latin America in the
1980's had finally landed in the North, culminating in the spectacular
meltdown of giant institutions deemed invincible 6 months before.

And our response? To use the same measures we always have in
creating wealth and stability. We used the power of the government to
regulate, protect and subsidize.

We may pull out of this awful mess in the coming months if our
governments react to the will of the people. Wall Street must pay, jobs
must be created, and the wealth must be spread around. We know this,
and our governments know it too.

Yet the Third World is trapped in a spiral of debt, privatization
and deep, persistent poverty. They exist in a precarious state of neo
colonial dependency and cannot follow our path out of economic disaster
because we insist they don't. We may believe colonialism is dead, but
our treatment of the Third World reveals otherwise. We may not govern
their countries directly, but the results are tragically similar. It is
only the methods that differ.

Perhaps the almighty shock we have received will sway power back
towards the disenfranchised, and perhaps we will have more sympathy for
their plight. We can mourn the death of capitalism, but know that it
never really existed -- not here at least.