Peter Koenig Interview with PressTV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFY5HT3HCk
This is an approximate transcript of a Skype interview with PressTV on IMF’s anti-BREXIT propaganda in Beijing ahead of the G-20 financial officials’ meeting in Chengdu, southwestern China’s. The interview was based on the following article of Associated Press (AP):
BEIJING (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund called Friday to end uncertainty over Britain’s vote to leave the European Union she says is dampening global economic growth.
The IMF cut this year’s global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points to 3.1 percent in a report released this week due to the shockwaves of the British vote, said Christine Lagarde.
Lagarde spoke after meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, and leaders of the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and other bodies ahead of this weekend’s gathering of finance officials of the Group of 20 major economies.
“Our first and immediate recommendation is for this uncertainty surrounding the terms of Brexit to be removed as quickly as possible so that we know the terms of trade and the ways in which the United Kingdom will continue to operate in the global economy,” said Lagarde at a news conference.
Lagarde said that before the British vote, the IMF had been preparing to raise its global growth forecast by 0.1 percentage points due to improvement in Japan, China and the 17-country [19-country- author’s note] euro zone.
“Unfortunately, the United Kingdom decided to go for Brexit,” said Lagarde, a former French finance minister. “This is disappointing.”
Investors are watching the G20 meeting for any sign the United States, Germany, China and other major economies may agree on joint action to accelerate a weak global economic recovery.
A similar meeting in February in Shanghai ended with a joint statement that said coordinated action was impossible because major countries were at different points in their economic cycles.
Some investors believe envoys in Shanghai agreed secretly to weaken the dollar to spur trade but there has been no official confirmation of that.
The final statement from this weekend’s gathering in Chengdu in China’s southwest “will be under scanner for any hints of policy coordination — monetary or fiscal,” Citigroup economists said in a report. – U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, speaking to reporters in Athens before flying to China, downplayed the likelihood of joint action.
“I don’t think this is a moment that calls for the kind of coordinated action that occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009,” said Lew. “It really is a moment where we each need to do what we can to ensure that where growth is soft it gets stronger and that prospects for the medium- and long-term are improved.”
Lew appealed for close integration of Britain and the EU in the event of a split.
“The best outcome is one that maximizes the integration of the UK and Europe and — because it’s likely to be a process that, at best, goes well beyond weeks or months — to have the nature of the discussion to be characterized by amicable, pragmatic engagement where the focus is on maximizing integration and cooperation.”
PressTV Question
What do you make of these IMF statements?
Answer PK
They are foremost an anti-BREXIT propaganda by Madame Lagarde. The IMF was given marching orders by Washington, to do their job in helping to avoid a BREXIT.
BREXIT could endanger ‘globalization’, as it may incite other European Union (EU) countries to do likewise – which would be good for the people of Europe and the world at large – but not for the corporate and financial elitist, of course. The dismantling of the undemocratic, dictatorial EU is a must for the people of Europe to regain their freedom and national sovereignty.
As usual, there is no logical explanation why BREXIT should negatively impact the world economy, none what-so-ever. – Why would it? – the UK is not even part of the Euro-zone and had always a lot of leeway making its own economic and monetary policy. In fact, the English Pound was linked closer to the US dollar than the Euro.
Only speculation and purposeful outside manipulation of currency and security and stock markets using BREXIT as a pretext to sowing financial havoc, initiated by financial institutions like the IMF, World Bank, FED and Wall Street might put a negative spin on BREXIT.
When the UK leaves the EU, it will be even freer, becoming a sovereign country again, and make monetary, financial and economic development policy as it best suits British interests.
We can just hope that other EU countries will also see the light.
Aren’t the leaders of the EU at least in part responsible for BREXIT?
PK: Of course they are. Brussels has gradually swallowed up every bit of independence and sovereignty of EU member nations, with an enormously bureaucratic, corrupt and complex apparatus; and this despite the fact that, both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties attempt to assure the protection of EU countries’ sovereignty.
Unfortunately, the contrary was – and ever more is the case. There is also an uneasiness among the people of all EU nations about the gradual but steady integration of the EU with NATO.
So, what Madame Lagarde says which is followed up by Mr. Lew, US Secretary of the Treasury, of a needed close integration of the UK in the EU, and warning that Brexit might cause enormous problems – is sheer propaganda and mind-manipulation. – What problems could there be? – They are never explained. There is absolutely no foundation for them.
None. Such statements are sheer fearmongering, aimed at brainwashing people with warnings and threats without any substance.
They are maneuvers to make people – and even politicians – believe that they could suffer from BREXIT; and maneuvers to influencing the British Parliament to revoke the peoples’ decision. As you know, the Parliament has to ratify the people’s vote to make it effective.
What is behind all this is the empire’s final domination of Europe, through the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).
Because if the EU breaks apart, the TTIP breaks apart – which is a must if Europeans want to survive decently, rather than ending up in slavehood to the empire, as a new low-cost / high-tech American colony. This is one good reason why the EU has to be dismantled.
The TTIP is a proposition of uncountable trillions of dollars of profit for foremost corporate America and the related Wall Street mafia, and a legal domination of every EU state, as the private corporate courts imposed by the TTIP would have supremacy over national courts.
If the EU is in danger of breaking up, I would not be surprised if the IMF, World Bank, FED and their related Wall Street banks, would produce another crisis in Europe – as they have done in 2007/2008. Debt is always a good argument – and a good instrument to keep countries in line.
Since nobody ever sets parameters of ‘manageable debt’, acceptable debt ceilings can be invented by the creditors. Debt will be fought with more debt and ‘high-risk’ interest, and with severe austerity programs. We know the scenario. Greece is a show case.
Manipulating countries – or the entire European Continent – into crisis mode is easy, as long as the western world depends entirely on the fraudulent dollar system, a pyramid system based on the debt-interest-debt spiral. So- anything the elusive elite wants is possible.
I know first-hand how these handlings of minds and ‘cooking’ of economic indicators work. I have seen it during my many years with the World Bank.
They call it ‘sanctions’ when they address an individual country, like Russia, Iran and so on; and it is an ‘economic crisis’, when an entire continent is being called to order.
I just hope the people will not fall for it.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.