Debt as Warfare Against Countries
Executive Summary
- Debt is a primary way that wealthier nations take control over less wealthy nations.
Introduction
Using debt as a type of warfare is explained in the following quotation.
“If you treat debt as a weapon, the basic idea is that finance is the new mode of warfare. That’s one of my chapters in the book. In the past, in order to take over a country’s land and its public domain, its basic infrastructure, and its mineral resources, you had to have a military invasion. But that’s very expensive. And politically, almost no modern democracy can afford a military invasion anymore.
So the objectives of the financial sector – of Wall Street, the City of London or Frankfurt in Germany – is to obtain the land. You can look at what’s happening in Greece. What its creditors, the IMF and European Central Bank (ECB) want are the Greek islands, and they want the gas rights in the Aegean Sea. They want whatever buildings and property there is, including the museums. You now have the IMF, European Central Bank and Washington Consensus taking over whole countries like Ukraine. The tactic is to purposely lend them the money that clearly cannot be repaid, and say, “Oh you cannot pay? Well, we’re not going to take a loss. We have a solution.” The solution is to sell off public enterprises, land and natural resources. In Greece’s case, 50 billion euros of its property, everything that it has in the public sector. The country is to be sold off to foreigners (including domestic oligarchs working out of their offshore accounts). Debt leverage is thus the way to achieve what it took armies to win in times past.” – Micheal Hudson