Banking on Empire

[Dirk39]

By Mitch Jeserich
Special to CorpWatch
February 4, 2004

(snip)
"Allowing Iraq's banking system to be controlled by a consortium of foreign corporations, headed up by a bank with a history of corruption and working with non-democratic regimes, is not a positive start towards quelling the people's skepticism of U.S. motives for being there. What is clear is that the Iraqi reconstruction money is being used to implement a politicial economy chosen by the Occupation Authority rather than waiting for the Iraqi people to elect a government that can make democratic choices on how to run their own economy.

"One way to actually control an economic system is going in and putting your pieces before there is a representative government," said banking expert Prins. "So far there has been almost $200 billion raised in various components to supposedly liberate and reconstruct Iraq and none of that has been done with a fully working democratic government in place."

The Bush administration is betting that the Iraqi people will want to continue what the administration has already started. "The only thing we can do is hope that when there are elections in Iraq they will look at the governing council and see the type of progress that they have made and they'll just continue with that progress," said Jay Brandes with the Commerce Department.

That's a $200 billion bet. Unless the Bush administration opens up its books on the running of the Iraqi economy, and makes transparent all actions concerning oil and contracts, it will be hard for the critics not to believe that democracy is on hold so that multinational corporations can takeover the Iraqi economy during this window of opportunity before a government of the people can stop it."
source: http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PRT.jsp?articleid=9848

Dirk