Price controls were next, along with rent and food subsidies, and doubling the minimum wage. By 1982, Mexicans were trading their pesos for dollars and sending their savings out of the country, as the peso became all but worthless in commerce.1 In 1981, the average wage for Mexican workers was 31% of the average wage for Americans. By 1989, it had fallen to 10%. Mexico, once one of the major food exporters in the world, was now required to import millions of dollars worth of food grains. This required still more money and more loans. All this occurred while oil prices were high and production was booming. A few years later, when oil prices fell, the failures and shortfalls became even more dramatic.
In 1995, Mexico's bank loans were once again on the brink of default, and, once again, U.S. taxpayers were thrown into the breech by Congress to cover more than $30 billion at risk. Although this loan was eventually repaid, the money to do so was extracted from the Mexican people through another round of massive
inflation, which plunged their standard of living even lower. The nation is now hopelessly mired in socialism. The Communist Party, promising "reform" and still more socialism, is attracting a large following and could become a potent political force.
1. The same American banks that were making the loans were soliciting this flight capital and ended up getting deposits of the same money they had lent. It was nice business both ways.
NEARER TO THE HEART'S DESIRE 105
Thus, the saga continues. After pouring billions of dollars into underdeveloped countries around the globe, no development has taken place. In fact, we have seen just the opposite. Most countries are worse off than before the Saviors of the World got to them.
SUMMARY
The IMF and the World Bank, were created at a meeting of
global financiers and politicians held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. Their announced goals were to facilitate international trade and to stabilize the exchange rates of national currencies. The unannounced goals were quite different. They were the elimination of the gold-exchange standard as the basis of currency valuation and the establishment of world socialism.
The method by which gold was to be eliminated in interna-
tional trade was to replace it with a world currency which the IMF, acting as a world central bank, would create out of nothing. The method by which world socialism was to be established was to use the World Bank to transfer money—disguised as loans—to the governments of the underdeveloped countries and to do so in such a way as to insure the demise of free enterprise. The money was to be delivered from the hands of politicians and bureaucrats into the hands of other politicians and bureaucrats. When the money comes from government, goes to government, and is administered by government, the result will be the expansion of government.
The theoreticians who dominated the conference at Bretton Woods were the well-known Fabian Socialist from England, John Maynard Keynes, and the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White. White became the first Executive Director for the United States at the IMF.
The Fabians were an elite group of intellectuals who agreed with Communists as to the goal of socialism but disagreed over tactics. Whereas Communists advocated revolution by force and violence, Fabians advocated gradualism and the transformation of society through legislation.
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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
Capital for the IMF and the World Bank comes from the
industrialized nations, with the United States putting up the most.
Funds consist partly of hard currencies—such as the dollar, yen,mark and franc—but these are augmented by many times thatamount in the form of "credits." These are merely promises by themember governments to get the money from their taxpayers if theBank gets into trouble with its loans.
