Contrasts

Announcements this week from Washington and the capitals of Latin America offer fascinating insightful contrasts into a dramatic turn of events in international finance. The Yanqui regime announced that it will inject some 60+ billion dollars into foreign banks so that they will resume interbank lending in dollars. In South America, the Bank of the South was inaugurated – a bank long in development thanks to the government of Hugo Chavez in Caracas. In this latter case the bank is capitalized in dollar equivalents to the tune of seven billion. The purpose? To provide direct assistance to small borrowers, among them proletarian, small farmer, and national infrastructural development projects for the American nations.When we take a closer look at both moves we see some very diagnostic contrasts. Diagnostic of what? Of the financial integrity of the two financial entities.In order for the Yanqui capitalist government to inject capital into foreign banks it has to first of all borrow the money. Yet, they are having a very hard time in borrowing money to support their ongoing needs (capital to offset the growing balance of trade deficit and the growing budgetary deficit.) So, in reality they will just print the money in “anticipation of future T-bill sales.” In other words, they don’t have the cash to inject so they will just print it up and claim that they will back up this money printing with future borrowing. This will necessarily be accompanied by another round of US dollar devaluation.On the other hand the Bank of the South is capitalized with real money in the hands of the contributing governments. No need to print money against future borrowing here.Does it matter which way is the way one chooses? There is, when one takes the long view. How so?For the moment the Gringo regime can continue to do what it has been doing for quite a few years now, if for no other reason than that the problem is a problem with Yanqui dollars and securities; for interbank lending purposes it is dollars that banks are refusing to loan to each other, not a refusal to interbank loan in other currencies. In contrast, however, is the certainty that spending money one does not have (and can’t yet borrow) is a historically fatal signal that the time is not far off when something fundamentally is going to change with regard to usage of the currency in question, is it not? At least as an international currency? On the other hand, with real money, the South American nations of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba and Uruguay are approaching the critical problems of continental infrastructure developmental finance in solid financial engineering ways that will not be cut short because of highly questionable financial manipulations. It’s at time like these – when your opponents hold all the cards – that the only way forward is to kick over the table. In short, one can expect desperate military adventuring and civil disorder organizing, as the alternative, to be very much on the Empire’s table.