The purpose of global poverty

The purpose of global poverty is to create a vast pool of cheap labor that the transnational corporations can exploit. Many Asian and African countries, along with those of East and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, compete with one another as to who can provide the cheapest labor. Corporations shut down their plants in the U.S. and Europe and set up shop in some part of the world where they can pay their workers 50 cents an hour. Workers here and in Europe, terrified of being thrown out of work, respond by settling for low pay.

This state of affairs did not come about by accident. Following the end of the Cold War, governments of the West pursued a ruthless campaign to facilitate the work of the corporations. Countries would borrow money from the Western banks. Inevitably, they would get into trouble with repayment whether because of the collapse of prices of primary commodities or the sharp rise in the value of the dollar or the devastation of their currencies following a speculative attack. Then the IMF -- effectively a U.S. government agency representing the interests of the West's bankers and creditors -- would offer to lend money, but with "conditionalities." Countries would have to pledge to follow the courses set by the IMF: cuts in public spending, currency devaluation, free trade, price liberalization, deregulation and privatization. Such programs implied wholesale political transformation. What the people themselves wanted was of no importance.