Video Infoblog: US 'neo-imperialist' dollar scheme explained by economist Yanis Varoufakis
VIDEO
Feb 2023
Greece’s former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis explains the US system of “neo-imperialism” based on the dollar, an “IOU issued by the hegemon”, which finances a huge trade deficit by letting foreign capitalists “extract colossal surplus value from their workers and then stash it away in America’s rentier economy”.
Washington found the magic formula that no other Empire had discovered before of how to make wealthy foreigners and Wealthy governments and poor governments and the poor of the world Finance the American government and the net Imports of the American economy everywhere we look these days we are seeing growing movements challenging the dominance of the U.S dollar and the financial hegemony that the United States has maintained over the world I have focused a lot here on the growing campaign to de-dollarize in Asia in Latin America and the Greek former Finance Minister Janus varafakis has given a very powerful speech challenging the hegemony of the US dollar exposing the is the scheme by which the United States has imposed the Dollar on the world and extracted the value the Surplus value of workers around the world and enriched itself and he did so in a speech that he gave this January I wrote about this in an article over a geopoliticaleconomy.com I have linked to it in the description below and I will also be showing some clips from this speech that Janus Focus gave for people who don't know Janus varafakis is an economist and he served as the Finance Minister of Greece and has since become a prominent activist and politician in Europe and criticizing the new Cold War calling for a non-aligned movement he's been outspoken internationally but I think his his most important contribution is his work as an economist he is a trained Economist with a PhD and he brilliantly explains just how unfair and exploitative the global capitalist system is and in this speech that he gave in January Janus varfakis discussed how the United States has created a system of neo-imperialism as he describes it and he says the highest form of Neo Imperialism is financialized and it's based on the hegemony of the US dollar why did the original non-aligned full prey to Neo imperialism's highest form which is of course globalization financialized capitalist globalization and the system he explains has its origins in 1971 when U.S president Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and that meant that the US dollar became this freely floating fiat currency and he described it as basically an IOU but it's an IOU issued by the hegemon the dollar suddenly became something like an IOU issued by the hegemon and that IOU issued by the United States allows the the U.S to maintain a massive trade deficit because other countries that are large exporting countries they export their products to the United States and he says this is a huge vacuum cleaner that sucks into the United States the net exports of countries like Germany Japan and China and that allows foreign and capitalists to extract colossal Surplus value from their workers and then stash it away in the United States rentier economy it was a huge vacuum cleaner the American trade deficit that the net exports of Germany Japan China but countries in the global South that are that are that are deficit countries do not have a trade surplus they have to import energy they have to import medicine they have to import technology parts and in order to do that they need to get access to dollars so in order to get access to those dollars those foreign countries they sell bonds which is government debt and those bonds are bought up by capitalist and Wall Street by vulture funds meanwhile the deficit countries in the global South in Asia in Latin America they constantly agonized over a shortage of dollars which they had to borrow from all states to import medicines energy and their raw to produce their own experts for earning the dollars with which to repay Wall Street and then when those countries in the global South can no longer pay those debts the international monetary fund is called in the IMF which then forces those governments in the global South to impose neoliberal austerity policies structural adjustment programs selling off their public assets selling off their natural resources cutting the minimum wage cutting health care and cutting education the global South deficit Nations run out of dollars and could not repay Wall Street that is when the West sent in the bay leaves the international monetary fund length dollars and conditioned that the debtor government handed over the country's land water ports airports electricity telephone networks even its schools and hospitals to the local and to the international oligarchs could took rents and what did they do with the rents sent them to American and in their capitalism to invest them so in a moment here I'm going to be showing a clip of this very powerful speech that Janus farafakis gave but I also just want to give a little credit here I should point out that the economist Michael Hudson first exposed this scheme this U.S dollar hegemony scheme back in 1972 right after Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and Michael Hudson exposed this in his book super imperialism the economic strategy of American Empire and in 2021 Professor Hudson just published a new Third Edition of the book updating it to talk about the new Cold War and the the growing Global campaign to challenge US dollar hegemony so of course what yonos verifocus is explaining here is something that Professor Michael Hudson has explained in many of the books and interviews that he's done but with that said this is the speech that Janis farfakis gave in in the description below I will link to the full speech that he gave why did the original fall prey to new imperialism's highest form which is of course globalization financialized capitalist globalization because capitalists in practice proved better internationalists than we were because they understood the nature of new imperialism better than we did and what do they they understand better than that they should better than we did the imperialism that was born in 1971 when Breton Woods collapsed and the United States dollar was no longer convertible prompting Richard Nixon to send a European governments and the world's capital is saying the dollar as of today as the America and the U.S shouldn't say American as the U.S deficit skyrocketed the world was flooded with American and the banks the central banks outside the United States were forced to use these American dollars since it could not be converted to Gold anymore as the reserves with which they backed their the dollar suddenly became something before long the Global Financial system what foreigners holding those ious could do or couldn't do with the ious issued a fully fledged deficit country with a big trade deficit but it was nothing like any other deficit country in the world you see Argentina France India needed to borrow dollars America didn't need to borrow dollars to back up its currency it didn't need to be raised interest rates in order to prevent an exodus of dollars The Exodus of dollars was the foundation of American hegemony capitalists in Central Time in Surplus countries countries like Japan Germany and later of course China saw the American trade deficit as a it was a huge vacuum cleaner the American trade deficit that was sucking the net exports of Germany Japan China and what did the Japanese German and later Chinese capitalists do with all these dollars that they earned they sent them back to the United States wouldn't do anything else with them to buy property in the United States American government bonds and a few companies that the American government allowed them to buy not buying not Microsoft none of the crucial meanwhile the deficit countries in the in Asia in Latin America they constantly agonized over a shortage of dollars which they had to borrow from all states to import medicines energy and their raw to produce their own experts for earning the dollars with which to repay Wall inevitably every now and then as you all the global South deficit Nations run out and could not repay Wall Street that is when the West sent in the bay leaves the international monetary fund length dollars on condition that the debtor government handed over the country's land water ports airports electricity telephone networks even its schools and hospitals to the local and to the international oligarchs could two currents and what did they do with the rents sent them to American and in their capitalism to invest them comrades had found the magic formula that no other Empire had discovered before of how to make wealthy foreigners and Wealthy governments and poor governments and the poor of the world Finance the American government and the net Imports of the American economy a Chinese official once described to me as something that was founded on a dark deal that's how the Chinese official put it to me a dark deal why did he call it because it was founded on a dark unspoken implicit fact between Americans America's ruling class and foreign capitalists and volunteers let me put it slightly different suppose you could end American hi Germany today there is a button here you can press it and end USC Germany who would stop you don't press it okay the U.S authorities the military the CIA Wall Street Silicon Valley they will try to stop you from pressing this button a crowd of non-americans would stop you from pressing it including German industrialists Saudi sheikhs Greek oligarchs European bankers and yes in other words the supremacy of the has been just as functional to the and their capitalism as it was to German Argentinian Nigerian Korean and Chinese without the dollars and Americans Global Chinese Japanese Korean or German capitals would not have been able continually to extract Coalition Surplus value from their workers and then stash it away in America's hereditary economy meanwhile Argentinian Greek Russian Ukrainian and Indian oligarchs would not be able to loot our countries take their public assets liquidate them and turn them into property rights in that was a speech that Janus varafakis gave this January in Cuba at the International Conference for the balance of the world and this was a meeting that was organized to advocate for the new international economic order which is a plan to create a fairer International Financial and economic system that the global South has been advocating for since the 1970s and that the West has consistently opposed and I should point out that at the same conference there was a very powerful speech given by a German lawmaker Member of Parliament her name is civim dagdalin and in this she condemned the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and she said that that members of the European Union have become servile vassals that are pursuing the interests of U.S corporations and following for foreign policy instructions from Washington in an attempt to preserve a absolute Global predominance and the Twilights of a unipolar age she gave a very powerful speech I wrote an article about that I will link to that in the description below as well unfortunately the audio of her speech isn't very good varafakis's audio is much better so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna play the audio of her speech here just because it's hard to hear with some of what she said um I mean janosvar focus is a brilliant Economist and he deserves a lot of credit for people who don't know after the 2008 financial crash the Greek economy was trapped in unpayable debt in response to that debt a series of right-wing neoliberal governments in Greece imposed austerity measures cutting wages and increasing taxes at the same time and just sucking wealth out of the country to pay this foreign currency denominated debt and they were unable to pay it off so the Greek people voted for the Socialist Party cerisa which was supposed supposed to challenge that austerity and neoliberalism of course they didn't do so in in a complete completely shameful act they completely betrayed their people after a referendum in 2015 in which the Greek people said they wanted to go against the European Union's neoliberal austerity and at the time Janus varafakis was Greeks Greece's Finance Minister and he famously opposed the neoliberal austerity measures that were mandated by the so-called Troika which was the European commission the European Central Bank and the international monetary fund and he wrote this famous blog post in which he said that the Paul the austerity program being imposed on Greece was a new Versailles treaty referring to the treaty and the agreement imposed on Germany after World War one that led to hyperinflation and led to the rise of the Nazis in World and he said that the the terms being imposed on Greece were Greece's terms of surrender that was trying to make Greece a vassal of the Euro group it had nothing to do with economics nor with any concern for the type of Reform agenda agenda capable of lifting Greece out of its mire it is purely and simply a manifestation of the politics of humiliation in action and he pointed out that it was a complete annulment of national sovereignty it was not the short of nothing short of the culmination of a coup and in response to that to his credit he resigned in 2015 as Finance Minister Minister and then completely shamefully the syriza government capitulated and gave in to these neoliberal policies after he left as Finance Minister and since then he has formed a left-wing political party and a movement in Europe and after giving that speech in in Cuba in which he talked about U.S neo-imperialism Giannis actually Giannis varfakis actually went to Mexico and he met with Mexico's leftist president Andres and posted a photo of them on Twitter and in this tweet he said it was a wonderful meeting with Mexico's inspiring president I thanked him for his steadfast support for our campaign to free Julian Assange we also discussed how the new Cold War begets an urgent need for a new non-aligned movement and a new international economic order so despite the fact that I do have some political disagreements With viral Focus he has been a very important voice on the international stage campaigning for the freedom of Julian Assange the political prisoner of the journalist who founded Wikileaks who's rotting in a British Maximum Security Prison for the so-called crime of exposing U.S war crimes and the U.S is trying to throw him in prison and he also has been a very important voice opposing the new Cold War he he calls it a new Cold War which is very important and in Europe there are so many warhawks just calling for escalating the new Cold War on both Russia and China so Jana sarafakis does deserve credit for being someone challenging the new Cold War and I think outlining the system of U.S dollar hegemony and Neo Imperialism is very important Professor Michael Hudson has been talking about this for decades but we need more and more people especially with big profiles like Giannis farafakis to speak about this and to use the I word Imperialism that is what the United States has maintained it is a system of imperialism and I'm glad to see someone with a massive platform like gianniswarfaka speaking about that I would invite people to go check out his full speech I Have a link to that in the description below and I want to thank everyone for watching and listening to geopolitical economy report I'll see you
