posted on Jan, 12 2009 @ 09:19 PM
Oh, it goes so much deeper than that I gather.
For example, I can order a CD from UK and pay less money for it at the end than if I bought it here in Canada. The whole demand and supply thing is
messed up and it really appears to be (among other things) about cornering (destroying) local markets and making a few gigantic corporations raking in
extreme profits at the expense of the local manufacturers. People are just collateral damage at that point...
I'll oversimplify it, but the way it seems to work is: a virgin market will be identified and since most countries need to borrow money, the IMF will
"determine" that in order to get the money, a country must import certain amount of goods (and stop exporting or producing their own). The market is
flooded with foreign goods (produced at some other country, at the expense of their cheap labour or whatever) and cheaper than what's offered by the
local producers.
In order to compete with the new influx of the foreign goods, local producers have to lower their prices which literally runs them out of business.
Then the huge corporations move in all the way and establishing themselves as the only supplier and producer. They will then start producing something
else perhaps with the labour there and export it elsewhere under the same scheme.
Perhaps I missed a step or two but that's the gist of it.
I remember the example of Jamaica who before the IMF "moved in" was producing all their milk requirements, locally. When they got blessed with a
"loan" they were told that they had to import condensed milk. This imported milk was much cheaper than their locally produced milk that the local
dairy industry went under. Same thing happened with potatoes, which are now mostly imported.
There are thousands of other examples, just go to your local grocery store and see what's imported, note the prices. Find out whether it is/was
produced locally as well and how much does/did it cost from local producers. Somewhere in the process you'll need to dig out why it was switched from
local to import (and I do not mean the "it was cheaper for the grocery chain" excuse, think bigger) and you'll bump into some kind of global
trading agreement that was made.
This is just my partial understanding of it, probably just tip of the iceberg, eh.