The BBC’s historic revisionism on Argentina

[Derechos]

Blatantly ignoring everything we know about Argentina, Robert Plummer somehow manages to turn the success story of its 2001 default on its head.

What’s going on with the BBC? I always assumed it to be a globally respected institution, bringing us fairly objective, high-quality reporting from around the world. And they make great documentaries too! So what went wrong? Why are they suddenly starting to peddle all these crazy myths about Greece?

In a truly appalling piece of journalism, BBC business reporter Robert Plummer yesterday wrote that “if Greece is to go down the route of Argentina,” which many sane commentators — including Nobel laureates like Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman — consider to be its best option, “it will have to leave the euro and default on most of its debt.”

But, Plummer adds, “this scarcely looks attractive, since Argentina is still being penalised for its own default. Although it has already struck deals with the majority of its creditors, it remains unable to borrow on world markets.” Indeed, Plummer argues that “Greece’s problems can be properly resolved only by years of painful structural reforms.”

Now, while these words may sound reasonable to a layman’s ears, the blatant historic revisionism behind them is literally painful to read for anyone who is familiar with the facts on either the Greek or the Argentine crisis. Structural adjustment failed. It failed painfully. Horribly. It destroyed nations. It crashed markets. It impoverished millions.

http://roarmag.org/2011/06/bbc-plummer-greece-argentina-crisis-krugman/

[naaman fletcher]

1. Great post..

It's worth nothing that this analysis does not just apply to Greece, but basically everyone who has been sold into IMF-World Bank debt slavery, as well as most consumers in the west.

[Peace Patriot]

2. I heard a BBC radio show on Chavez that was so prejudicially anti-Chavez, I could hardly believe my

ears. It was like a Faux News show. And I've noticed this particular bias--against the Latin American Left--in other BBC news reporting.

I don't know the whole story of what's happened to the BBC, but I suspect that their decline started when the Blair government went for their throats over the Iraq War and the interview of government bio/chem expert David Kelly who anonymously questioned their evidence for WMDs in Iraq (and was later found dead in highly questionable circumstances). Soon after, there was news of downsizing at the BBC, and drastic cuts in staff. Though the group that was running the BBC when the Blairites attacked it refused to give up David Kelly's name as the source of the criticism, I think that plans were put in motion at that time to disempower the BBC as an independent news source--and the utter crap that we're seeing now, about the Latin American Left (a news story that I follow closely) is the result.

I think we need to understand that British and European banksters, as well as U.S. banksters--really the transnational, "western" bankster establishment--and allied corporate powers and super-rich investors--were making tons of money off the ruination of economies in Latin America, along with gross exploitation of Latin American natural resources and workers. It was a major looting expedition. And one of the reasons that these same money moguls and their toady press hate Hugo Chavez and his closest allies--such as Nestor Kirchner and Evo Morales--is that they put a stop to it, and rallied the region to establish its independence. One of the very first things that happened, after the Venezuelan people peacefully defeated the U.S.-supported coup d'etat against Chavez, was that the Chavez government loaned Argentina part of the money they needed to get out from under onerous World Bank/IMF debt and did so on easy terms, as well as negotiating some barter trade deals (oil for beef). The conditions for World Bank/IMF loans were killing Argentina, literally destroying the fabric of society. This is when the Bank of the South was formed--as an alternative to the World Bank/IMF--in order to keep development financing and loans and debts within the control of the Latin American community in order to promote social justice and real development of the region, rather than vicious multinational corporate development aimed at looting the region. The loans and trade deals may be south-south, or multi-lateral across the Global South including, for instance, China, but the rules are written by Latin Americans and their leaders.

A typical early example of this was the Chavez government's re-negotiation of Venezuela's oil contracts. Prior to the Chavez administration, while the oil was already nationalized, the "neo-liberal" governments had been basically giving away the oil profits, in a 10/90 split, favoring the multinational oil companies, who ruled the industry and set their own conditions for developing the resource, and while skimming off the top for Venezuela's rich, urban, oil elite, and utterly neglecting their own country and people--an extremely irresponsible, lazy, greedy, coup-prone elite who think they are "born to rule." The Chavez government were skillful and very strong negotiators. They required a 50/50 split of the oil profits, favoring Venezuela's social programs. This sent Exxon walking out of the talks, and opened the market to smaller oil companies from multiple countries, including Italy, Spain, France and Norway. Brazil's Lula da Silva later followed up on this precedent, set by Venezuela, and insisted that Brazil's big new oil find be similarly set up, with benefit to the poor.

The transglobal corporations who are running things here and in Europe--including the World Bank/IMF--hate Chavez for setting precedents like these, and for the biggie, the creation of institutions like UNASUR (all South American countries) and CELAC (all Latin American countries), which exclude the U.S. and act in the interests of Latin Americans. Chavez has been very inspiring as to pulling Latin American countries together to act cooperatively among themselves and to act as an economic/political block in Latin America's interest in world forums and in regard to world trade. The World Bank's usurious loan portfolio in Latin America fell of by about 95% during this period.

Since the British government has become a junior partner in U.S. oil wars and other exploitative ventures, it was probably inevitable that the BBC would be corrupted--downsized, corporatized, made a tool of the rich--like every other news and opinion source in the western world. Reuters has also been thoroughly corrupted, if their coverage of Latin American is any guide. I call them Rotters now. And I call the BBC the BBCons. Sad but true.

It's all about neo-colonialism, wealth and power, and a kind of desperation on the part of the very rich to have it all--all the power, all the money, all the resources. They can't have the BBC questioning their oil wars. They can't have Latin American upstarts questioning their "freedom" to loot everybody and everything, and actually effectively challenging them. Lula da Silva called them "the blue-eyed wonders of Wall Street"--those who were trying to dictate economic policy to Latin America, while they themselves crashed the world economy, and though he apologized for making a racial remark, that criticism was pointed and sincere--that these wealthy, greedy northerners who were preaching de-regulation and all the rest of the neo-liberal bullshit, couldn't even keep their own house in order. He broke from them, on many of these policies, and allied with Chavez and the rest of the Latin American Left--that's something else they hate Chavez for. They wanted to make the more business-friendly da Silva their ikon. But he's a former steelworker--and spent time in jail for being a labor organizer during the Brazilian fascist dictatorship--so he could smell a bosses' con and it didn't take that much encouragement for him to see the advantages of solidarity, for one thing, and of the "raise all boats" philosophy that he and Chavez developed in many meetings.

The U.S. is STILL pursuing a "divide and conquer" strategy in Latin America, though it is well past its "sell by" date and is smelling up the kitchen. And the British (and the Canadians in this hemisphere) are trotting right along, hoping...I don't know...that the U.S. can pull off another Iraq maybe? a new oil war? a couple of coup d'etats like that rotten stinking thing they did in Honduras? more resources to loot? more slave labor to exploit? It's pretty ugly what these countries are doing, and it's pretty ugly what they've done to the BBC.

[naaman fletcher]

3. BBC

"I think we need to understand that British and European banksters, as well as U.S. banksters--really the transnational, "western" bankster establishment--and allied corporate powers and super-rich investors--were making tons of money off the ruination of economies in Latin America, along with gross exploitation of Latin American natural resources and workers."

Like the US media, the european media has become owned by the banks. In regards to your post, whereas once the actual direct exploitation of the LA economies was the goal, today the banks are happy simply to loan money to LA countries and extract their pound of flesh later. The real threat of Chavez is the thought of LA forming a regional banking and not needing the IMF/World Bank crowd, imho.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Horrendous. Clearly he knows so many people know he's lying.

They only hope to snare those who haven't bothered to find out the truth on their own.

Who would have anticipated something this underhanded, and despicable? So many people were watching with great interest as Kirchner turned things around with amazing skill.

As a reminder, from Mark Weisbrot, at Kirchner's death:

Mark Weisbrot.Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, D.C.
Posted: October 27, 2010 04:33 PM
Kirchner Rescued Argentina's Economy, Helped Unite South America

The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina's economy is comparable to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner had to stand up not only to powerful moneyed interests but also to most of the economics profession, which was insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They proved wrong, and Kirchner was right.

Argentina's recession from 1998-2002 was indeed comparable to the U.S. Great Depression in terms of unemployment, which peaked at more than 21 percent, and lost output (about 20 percent of GDP). The majority of Argentines, who had until then enjoyed living standards among the highest in Latin America, were pushed below the poverty line. In December of 2002 and January 2003, the country underwent a massive devaluation, a world-historical record sovereign default on $95 billion of debt, and a collapse of the financial system.

Although some of the heterodox policies that ultimately ensured Argentina's rapid recovery were begun in the year before Kirchner took office, he had to follow them through some tough challenges to make Argentina the fastest growing economy in the region.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-weisbrot/kirchner-rescued-argentin_b_774966.html