{"id":38996,"date":"2011-05-25T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=38996"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:52:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:52:23","slug":"the-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/the-strings\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strings"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fe Bongolan<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As\u00a0former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn awaits trial for his alleged assault and rape of a Sofitel Hotel maid, the information and evidence bubbling to the surface becomes more compelling a conundrum. This conundrum almost makes you imagine the possibility of conspiracy: a set-up discrediting the man holding the strings and on the brink of a turning point. That includes two ‘smoking guns’ familiar\u00a0to Americans: a semen-stained dress,<\/a> and the potential for\u00a0the\u00a0entire European Union’s\u00a0economic collapse<\/a> from debt default by Greece — a situation quite\u00a0similar in seriousness\u00a0to the\u00a0US\u00a0sub-prime lending\u00a0crisis leading to\u00a0our economic\u00a0meltdown\u00a0of 2008.<\/p>\n

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Having the wisdom of hindsight from two recent sex scandals\u00a0that rocked the US — those of President Bill Clinton and former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer —\u00a0it’s easy to see one way how\u00a0Strauss-Kahn’s defense team could play his case out in the US courts. Both men in positions of power were taken down by their indiscretions and their respective downfalls used to set up political and economic crime. A conspiracy theory with this type of historical backdrop for Strauss-Kahn’s defense may be\u00a0plausible enough to\u00a0provide shadow of a doubt for\u00a0an American\u00a0jury, particularly in New York. But before we delve into further speculation on this story, we\u00a0need to\u00a0dig\u00a0deeper and focus on\u00a0what the IMF, Strauss-Kahn’s former place of employment, does and what was about to happen prior to his arrest on May 15.<\/p>\n

Near the end of World War II, the IMF was formed to act as global lender to struggling nations working to recover after that war’s devastation, and by its tradition has been headed by a European ever since. In order to qualify for a loan from the IMF, a\u00a0country needs to become a contributing member, paying in to a “membership fund” contributing a fair percentage of\u00a0its gross national income to be used by fellow member nations in need. Memberships are “weighted”\u00a0based on the amount of a country’s\u00a0annual contribution\u00a0using the\u00a0American dollar as benchmark. The more money you have, the more weight and power\u00a0you carry.<\/p>\n

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A loan from the IMF, the ‘lender of last resort’, to help struggling nations regain economic footing comes\u00a0at a cost: IMF’s Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) requires that in order to qualify for IMF assistance, a country must be willing to submit to economic structural change that may not be in keeping with\u00a0its traditions,\u00a0cultural\u00a0values, or be sensitive to its ecological and environmental conditions.\u00a0These loans are made with one thing in mind: to move a country, for better or worse,\u00a0towards development that the IMF can consider a “beneficial asset.” Like all loans from any bank, the IMF\u00a0requires a high degree of fiscal accountability to the parties involved,\u00a0which in this case includes\u00a0the European Union.<\/p>\n

It was Greece’s\u00a0lack of accountability\u00a0that got them into trouble. Since 2001, the government of Greece\u00a0has failed to truthfully report its official economic statistics. Over a nine year period, Greece had paid Goldman Sachs and other banks hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to arrange transactions to obscure its high level of borrowing, allowing Greek administrations to spend beyond their means unchecked by\u00a0European Union overseers. By the time Georgios Papandreou of the Socialist Party took office as Prime Minister\u00a0of Greece in 2010, his government faced a staggering debt load that denigrated its credit rating to junk status, making Greece virtually unable to pay off its debts without drastic austerity measures. These measures, implemented over the last year,<\/a> have caused deep social unrest, leading to violent protest and death. They have also not fixed Greece’s insolvency problem.<\/p>\n

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was aboard the airliner that was to take him back to a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Greek debt crisis. The meeting’s aim was to angle more capital from Germany, one of the strongest economies in the EU, to keep Greece afloat until it agreed to a debt repayment plan that would not put it or other members of the\u00a0EU into deep economic jeopardy. Germany had already extended 23 billion euros to Greece to stem\u00a0its fiscal bleeding in the fall of 2010, at deep political cost to Merkel from members of her own center-right wing party.<\/p>\n

Today, Angela Merkel\u00a0may likely be breathing a short sigh of relief over Strauss-Kahn’s arrest. Without the coordination of the IMF Chief who would bring all the players to the table to deal with this eurozone crisis, the government of Greece\u00a0may have to\u00a0agree to\u00a0the sacrifice of privatizing and selling\u00a0its principal assets:<\/a> including the ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, and OTE, its primary telecom provider. Imagine the United States selling off the Ports of New York and San Francisco and AT&T and you get the feel of the deal. At least for the short term, Germany is off the hook.<\/p>\n

The current leadership void in the IMF raises questions by member nations outside the eurozone to rethink the tradition of selecting a ‘European only’ IMF Chief. Rising economic powers Brazil and China\u00a0are leading\u00a0the call for\u00a0a qualifications-based selection\u00a0of the new head of the IMF. The lack of transparency in the selection process\u00a0— also a tradition of the organization — is chafing at the member states who are tired of the American and European grapplehold\u00a0on the purses of the planet.<\/p>\n

For the present, the American justice system is working with facts in hand. DNA evidence on the maid’s dress provides proof of Strauss-Kahn’s participation in a sexual act. Whether or not it was consensual is still up the defense\u00a0lawyer’s sleeve. Whether or not you subscribe to conspiracy theories, there are plenty of available and convenient circumstances described above that can give you pause to imagine that Strauss-Kahn’s predicament is a set-up on a grand scale, with the strings pulled by the very bankers and heads of state capable of turning countries upside down to insure their own economic stability at the cost of another country’s soul.<\/p>\n

As mentioned before in “No Rules,”<\/a> depending on the strategies of\u00a0his defense team,\u00a0the outcome of the rape trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn\u00a0may hinge on who and what we value in this world.\u00a0That\u00a0may not be so easy an issue to resolve in one rape trial. It may not even come to light at all. But what if it did? Since so many other lives have fallen by the wayside in the pursuit of economic development and stability, what — in the case of a hotel maid who walked into Strauss-Kahn’s hotel room and may have changed history — is one more? That is a string that needs to be tied around and pulled tight on the conscience of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fe Bongolan As\u00a0former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn awaits trial for his alleged assault and rape of a Sofitel Hotel maid, the information and evidence bubbling to the surface becomes more compelling a conundrum. This conundrum almost makes you imagine the possibility of conspiracy: a set-up discrediting the man holding the strings … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}