World Economic Crisis: 200 Million in Poverty/WW Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit -------------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 17, 1999 issue of Workers World newspaper --------------------------------- WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS THROWS 200 MILLION BELOW POVERTY LEVEL By Milt Neidenberg Recent U.S. reports about the upturn of collapsed Asian economies were nothing more than a public-relations gimmick. They were calculated to alleviate fears that the global economic crisis was reaching the U.S. domestic economy. And to give a humanitarian slant to imperialist policies of the U.S-controlled International Monetary Fund. A new World Bank report exposes the pain this collapse inflicts on the working class. The bank estimates that 200 million "newly poor" have become impoverished in Africa, South Asia, East Asia and Latin America since 1993. And that's despite the reduction of poor in China from 280 million to 125 million from 1990 to 1997. The report blamed the economic crisis that began in 1997 in Thailand and spread throughout the region and beyond. It admitted that economic reforms--meaning even greater opening to imperialism that translates into robbery of wealth and resources--can increase inequalities. The report refers to Indonesia as one of the countries hit hardest by crisis, stating that those living in poverty soared to about 20 percent in 1998 from 11 percent in 1997. That translates into an extra 20 million people--the equivalent of a medium-sized country--living below $1 a day. "Early survey results confirm that the impact of the crisis has been very severe," the bank admits. In 1993, the World Bank estimated that there were 1.3 billion people living on less than $1 a day. Two years later, in 1995, the number had grown to 1.5 billion, confirming that world poverty existed long before the Asian crisis. The 1997 financial turmoil in Asia only threw tens of million more workers and working-class families into poverty in south Korea, Thailand, India and Indonesia. It is the imperialist policies led by U.S. bankers and investors that dominated Third World countries. They inflicted overwhelming debt, bankruptcies, staggering unemployment and uncontrollable inflation, leading to economic collapse. Investors poured billions of dollars into real-estate development for the wealthy or recklessly invested in industries, creating gluts due to overproduction. Speculators manipulated local currencies, with $1.5 trillion--that's $1.5 million million--exchanged daily by imperialist bankers worldwide, with U.S. bankers leading the pack. When the economies collapsed, the workers and all the poor people bore the burden. Did the World Bank encourage any policy changes to improve conditions for the workers? If they did no one on Wall Street paid attention. The New York Times last Feb. 16 stated that at a World Bank meeting in Hong Kong in 1997, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers pressed successfully for opening more markets to further capital penetration. Rubin was an investment banker for three decades and a former Goldman Sachs director who made a fortune on Wall Street. He knew full well these policies would increase suffering in already impoverished sections of the world population. "Peaceful" imperialist economic occupation and plunder around the world must be seen in the same light as its military assault against Yugoslavia--just another form of a predatory attack. Resistance and street struggles go on worldwide against this global poverty as they do against war. An important step in building more opposition here in the U.S. is getting a full measure of this imperialist enemy and its plan for world domination. Resistance is sure to come. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-06.19.99-02:02:53-8400