Events

With  Betsy Bowman, Ph.D. 

Dr. Betsy Bowman, a founder of the Center for Global Justice, examines  “The Making of the U.S. Tribute System”on Wednesday, February 23, at 10am in the Sala Quetzal of the Biblioteca Publica.

 Globalization and the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency have effectively established an international economic system which is tantamount to a system of rendering tribute to the US.  Both within the wealthy countries and in the world at large, elites have been able to arrogate to themselves the vast majority of the increase in wealth due to productivity increases and advantageous trade treaties.  Globalization has wrapped the world’s economies in straight-jacket trade treaties and deregulated financial markets that people are virtually helpless to undo.  As local economies are destroyed by products from transnational corporations that flood markets, all wealth is transferred to elites within individual countries and to the elites of the world’s already very rich countries.  This was not an accident.   

 As foreign countries exporting to the US market earn US dollars, they recycle them back to the US by buying US Treasury bonds.  The US then finances both its trade deficit and its budget deficit with the US dollars other countries return to us that we originally had sent to them to buy their products.  The US Federal Reserve has an endless amount of credit – IOUs or Treasury bonds – that it can print and sell.  The Federal Reserve can then lend this money to the US government to finance tax cuts, the Defense Dept. and its empire of 865 military bases in foreign countries,  or it can give/lend it to the banks and financial institutions.  The recent financial and economic crisis shows what the banks and financial institutions can do with lots of really cheap, borrowed money.  On the one hand, they crashed the economy hurting millions of regular folks; on the other hand, they kept handing out huge salaries and bonuses to themselves and their employees.