A Plan to Collapse Iran’s Central Bank and its Origins

The foreign policy of the richest countries has always depended in controlling the world’s monetary systems. As a continuation of the postcolonial systems, they continue holding the power to grant credits to poorer countries, to rescue their economies in periods of crisis and in pushing for an increase in world “reserves” and international “liquidity.” The end result of this policies resulted in creating world inflation and enriching those central banks that controlled the dice of this international game (just as it had been done in the previous colonial period).

Colonialism may seem to many an ‘old history’ that was overcome with the modernization of the world and the decolonization processes after World War II.  Nonetheless, in the following postcolonial period many already institutionalized strategies continued working and are still present today.  The IMF, for example, was one of the institutions born as a result of the decolonization process. Its results (far distant from their founding vision) were to keep the postcolonial countries in monetary and economic dependency.

For long the world’s centralized banking and monetary authorities, headed primarily by the International Monetary Fund, collaborated to initiate a period of surveillance, aid, and guarantees for the world’s financial markets as  and  explained in the post “The IMF and Moral Hazard“. However, the long-term results of theses policies fostered the dependency of postcolonial economies and, as such, empowered the populist leaderships in the former colonies that pursued expansive social programs that couldn’t be supported without their foreign aid and long-term indebtment.

Video: The Plan To Collapse Iran’s Central Bank

Today, I saw a video titled “The Plan To Collapse Iran’s Central Bank” in which analysts in the U.S.A. are evaluating the possibilities of collapsing Iran’s economy and disenabling them to continue researching their nuclear programs. Strategies as these may seem as “bogus” to many; however, the long history of international monetary intervention of the economies in postcolonial countries is long and influential (see: Pastor, Manuel (1989). Latin America, the Debt Crisis, and the International Monetary Fund. Latin American Perspectives).  The results of any of these strategies always end up creating inflation and as  mentioned in his essay “End the IMF” in the year 1963 the only solution for and end to inflation (an as such for peace and economic recovery) is to eliminate the IMF and the interventionist international monetary system that has proved, in practice, a gigantic machine for world inflation.

File:50000 IRR obverse.jpg
50,000 Iranian rial

Occupy the Mind with Economics

Video: Occupy Wall Street & Capitalism: A Professor’s Response

Karl Marx was an intellectual radical.  What that means is that he sought to get at the root cause of social ills with his analysis.  Despite my extreme disagreement with Marx on his diagnosis, I have always been attracted to intellectual radicalism.  Not the fashionable radical chic of rock stars, etc., but the nerdy radicalism of scholars and public intellectuals.  Not a radicalism evident where the cool-kids party while skipping school, but a radicalism born in the library and in reading dusty old books and studying long and hard to try and figure things out.  Think hard, read widely, think even harder, then attempt to write clearly — that is the intellectual radicalism that I find exciting.”

Continue reading via: Occupy the Mind with Economics

Amazon’s top 10 History Books of 2011

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's BerlinLost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War IICatherine the Great: Portrait of a WomanThe Greater Journey: Americans in ParisA History of the World in 100 Objects

The Best Books of 2011

Save up to 40% on our editors’ picks for the top 100 best books of the year, plus year-end top 10s in over two dozen categories

So many books. So many choices. It’s not easy putting together a list of the year’s best books, but we’ve held many meetings and votes, we’ve pored over the books and occasionally poured our hearts out to get you this final Top 100. For every book on the list, there has been an impassioned plea and an argument made–so don’t just look at the Top 10 or 20. There are great books all up and down the Top 100 list. One of them might be the perfect read for you.


The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
Radioactivity: A History of a Mysterious ScienceDestiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda1861: The Civil War Awakening


Video: Larry H. White talks about his upcoming book “The Clash of Economic Ideas”

 

Lawrence H. White is professor of economics at George Mason University and the F. A. Hayek Professor of Economic History in the department of economics at University of Missouri — St. Louis. His teaching and research areas include economic history, monetary theory, money and banking, and history of economic thought. White holds a PhD and a MA in economics from University of California at Los Angeles; he also received his AB in the same area from Harvard University. He is visiting professor at Universidad Francisco Marroquín.

Visit “The Clash of Economic Ideas” video collection
http://newmedia.ufm.edu/gsm/index.php/The_Clash_of_Economic_Ideas

Produced by New Media / UFM 2011
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The Drug War in Guatemala: A Conversation with Giancarlo Ibarguen

“I blame the war on drugs in the United States for what is happening here in Guatemala.”
Giancarlo Ibarguen

Most of the cocaine shipped north from Central and South America these days travels through Guatemala and into Mexico before eventually crossing the border to the United States. The value of that cocaine, even before it enters the US market, is approximately $40 billion a year. That’s nearly the size of Guatemala’s entire economy.

The drug cartels in Guatemala act with impunity and effectively control much of the country. As Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom recently told Al Jazeera, “The drug traffickers are much better armed and financed than our military and our government.” Guatemala, as a result, has become a very dangerous place to live.

What’s the solution? According to Giancarlo Ibarguen, president of the Universidad Francisco Marroquin, the US government should end its war on drugs.

Approximately 5 minutes.

Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning.

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