What the disastrous consequences of neoliberal economics must be, and why we know this
You might find this against counter-intuitive, but sub-saharan Africa in general [and The Gambia in particular] are 'ahead of the game' when it comes to the final result of adopting the neoliberal economic version of capitalism. First introduced in the name of 'monetarism' in the Thatcher/Reagan years, as with most inflexible ideologies, neoliberal economics have inbuilt weaknesses relating to their inhuman, over-systemic nature. The political and banking elites are well aware of this, but the analogies between Western and African greed make the comparison compelling....and riddled with Armageddon dangers. The Slog investigates the lessons to be learned in full.
The practice of sovereign greed is clear enough to anyone over forty years old with an open mind and common sense. The neoliberal approach to government treasury economics is one of offering tax benefits to skilled professionals and entrepreneurs while cutting social benefits for the sick, the old, and the least money-fixated. Investing treasury monies in the citizenry is universally frowned upon, or simply blind-sided.
Thus, during the POTUS debates between Reagan and Carter, the challenger responded to every sound social investment by President Carter with, ''There you go again, spending taxpayers' money''. I was never a big Carter fan, but at the time I remember wondering what on earth Ronnie thought the point of taxes might be if not to invest in every State's most valuable asset: the People. Despite her protestations, Margaret Thatcher was acutely aware of the sensitivity of the issue: having bluntly and without forethought almost screamed at the late Robin Day, ''There is no such thing as society'', she later begged the BBC to allow her a retake. In those more ethical times, the BBC rightly refused.
Throughout most sub-saharan black Africa, corrupt embezzlement of public funds is endemic...and while The Gambia is more stable tribally and religiously than most, the performance of central government in terms of people investment is woeful to the point of being close to zero. There is no NHS, no unemployment benefit, no State education, no farming subsidies, no national schemes for skill-training and no investment in the infrastructure. The only developments government here invests in are roads, ports and tourism development areas [TDAs], but this too is misleading as they depend entirely on the Chinese, the Saudis and latterly the IMF to pay for them. The biggest growth industry in the Gambia is stuffing politician and civil service bribes into disguised Swiss bank accounts, followed closely by tourism, construction and retailing - most of which in and of itself is owned by those of European, Indian or Arab descent. Almost everything Gambia needs is imported, so the country has a permanent balance of payments problem that simply gets bigger and bigger every year.
Spotting the similarities
Can you see the commonality yet? The monetarist ''financialisation'' of the UK economy has made the Nation poor in real export performance and the bankers rich; it has increased Britain's dependence on toeing the NATO/US line, emptied the Treasury and weakened the NHS by succumbing to ridiculous panic in the face of Covid19, and seen its educational system become so narrow, politicised and inflexible, there has been a quite staggering loss of citizen willingness to think for themselves. Instead of the banks fulfilling their original role as purveyors of money to each generation's entrepreneurs, the fabled ''trickle down wealth'' process has actually been sucked up into banks who have - more and more - used their giga-wealth to buy other banks, while focusing on funding Big Globalist Multinationals to get even bigger through M&A. As we now see (but every villain from Gina Miller to Jeremy Hunt affects denial) Britain is under the immediate cosh of blocist centralisers in the EU, and New World Order fanatics persistent in their desire to make the UK look dysfunctional and thus unable to function independently. PM Sunak follows the insane mass migration policies because he works for them, not us...and Keir Starmer is exactly the same animal.
Comparing the UK to Gambia, for EUNATO hegemony read Sino-Islamic hegemony; for financial services dependence in the UK, read Tourism dependence in Gambia; for educational and social neglect in Britain read precisely the same ignorance in my adopted country; for ECOWAS union politics in Gambia, read Brussels blocism in Britain; for emptied Treasury during the Big Pharma Contrick19, read tourism crippled in Gambia; for lower rates of good food repurchase in Britain read zero ability to afford a decent balanced diet here.
But the last commonality is that of being enmeshed in the fishing net of credit-derived debt in the face of rising interest rates, and exposure to both smartphone technology and media content. For this is where brutal cultural change has served the geopolitical control-freaks in the shape of narcissism, fame fantasies, State control of information and mass brainwashing alongside higher and higher costs of consumption.
Here in The Gambia, the astonishing rise and rise of smartphone usage has involved increases in citizen debt both to purchase these infernal spy-phones and renew credits to feed the addiction. Equally, however, it is seen by young Gambians as primarily useful for banal conversation at all times and [especially among females] selfies to the point where - when either at the beach or dressed up on Fridays - they pose and pout for what often becomes an amateur fashion shoot. Thus, even though they skipped both pre-digital cameras and mass cellphones, they hardly ever use their phones data content as a source of information beyond tabloid fame obsession, beefcake and locally made soaps appealing to a truly tooth-rattlingly low IQ and/or half-educated influence.
In short, they are even further down the road to simplistic manipulation than other similarly distracted electorates in the First World.*
*In one area - advertising - I am bound to say a local acting profession really is emerging. To any and all Western commercials directors, I would point out that good scripts, intuitive casting and really good ''comedic'' actors make the TV ads here infinitely more engaging and LOL funny than the programmes.
Finally - last but far from least - Big Pharma represents the beginnings of a problem in my homeland, whereas in my self-banishment here, deregulated really means unregulated. There are lots of meds-pack notices saying 'Prescription Only' - somewhat pointless virtue-signalling given that there are no GPs to write the scrips. Once again, a State health service on the way to collapse allows one to glimpse what Britain will become in the end. [the coming EUNATO mandatory approach to ''vaccination'' ensures that we will go the same way as Black Africa].
Predicting the consequences
Poverty moving rapidly towards desperation is far closer in the 3rd World than the first. For different reasons (naked corruption, lack of cultural remorse etc) Covid19 made less impact in terms of ''New Normal'' kidology here than it did in the West...because compared to a pressing need to find family food for the evening meal, a bad flu bout was seen as something of a non-event. But the converse is also valid: people here are far closer to abject destitution than in the UK, and after a season of 50% fall off in tourists thanks to iniquitous EUNATO State lockdown in 2021, lots of seasonal workers crept ever closer towards starvation. In short, we'll see the full consequences in the Gambia before you reach that stage in the UK.
The ultimate consequences of following neoliberal perverted monetarism all the way down to the bottom of the pit could be summarised as follows:
When the wealth gushes up not down, the mass repeat consumption neoliberal economies require doesn't happen.
It thus has to be stimulated by lax credit at low interest rates - and where possible, the import of poor quality goods from elsewhere in order to keep the Proles feeling rich.
This has the potential to upset the import/export balance of payments problem, and produce a fall in the currency's value, causing inflation at home.
Competing Sovereigns then buy one's currency with a view to taking 'directionalised' profit so exports fall, imports rise, and the citizenry suffers further inflation.
In desperation, the Nation State borrows money to prop up the currency and provide more benefits to its by now very concerned electorate.
Down and down goes the national wealth, up and up goes the national debt, further and further away goes the normalisation of interest rates in the light of citizens and sovereigns now mired in debt.
Finally, there are four further crucial similarities you share with Gambians:
1 Brits and Gambians are more likely to comply rather than complain
2 While Brits have their imported thugs, Gambians have their beach bumsters and Nigerian hookers. Both can [and already are] displaying an increase in violent aggression if they don't get what they want
3 Gambians rarely expect elections to make any difference, and smart British voters feel the same: there is no radical Opposition deemed likely to tackle the underlying problems of Greed
4 Tribal voting in Gambia and the UK is very different, but requires exactly the same skills in lying through your teeth about what you stand for. While the UK has Greens, EU Remainers, ScotNats, Plaid Cymru, Hard Left, anti-EU, Hard Right, Ulster Unionists, Scottish Tories, English Tories, The Labour Party, PC feminists and gender nutters, so too Gambia has The Mandinka tribe [the largest] followed by the Fula, Wolov, Jola, and Sarahule. In the 2021 Election that returned Adama 'Plank' Barrow to the Presidency, the dominant Mandika tribe was split about what it was after, but its dominant size still handed the election to Barrow. He is the leader of the National People's Party, but all Parties here claim to be 'National', 'United' or 'Alliance' in a somewhat incredible attempt to suggest they have support above the tribal spectrum. This is no more true than the myth that Keir Starmer will offer any real alternative to Rishi Sunak.
Both cultures share a tendency to vote in favour of self-interest and their wallets. Both electorates lack the education, informed radicalism and discernment to throw out the traitors at the top. But Gambia is further down the road to impoverished perdition...and this why I contend that Brits in particular and the EU in general would do well to use my adopted country as a yardstick for what the coming Apocalypse might entail.
Ultimately, neoliberal capitalism is a cul de sac economic system doomed to eat itself. It gives more and more ridiculous wealth to the tiny percentage of winners, but has no solution to the bust that inevitably follows the mortal combat [between rising interest rates and the level of lax household borrowing to maintain the feverish repeat consumption level] required to keep the ideology solvent.
Ever since 2009, the global alliance between Pharma, multinational business, central banking, silicon valley powered State surveillance and its dupes [climate emergencists, Davosites and crazy Vegans] has been trying to put off the moment when this sick neolib/neocon joke finally becomes obvious to even the last compliant sofa-bound blob.
Along the way, we Anglofones lost the battle to establish a living wage for nurses, Waspi justice, real Brexit, an independent foreign policy, Covid19 weapon development, the reality of vaccine calumny, a fair deal for Russian speaking Ukrainians, and truth about the 2020 POTUS election tampering. It represents a grand theft of civil rights spanning thirty years, exacerbated by opening borders to anti-social thugs.
Free speech and direct democracy have entered an existential crisis in the West; Black Africans have rarely if ever had either. The key thing that will accelerate events here in The Gambia compared to the West is the much thinner line between being poor now, and desperate by this time next year. The UK in particular already has its systematically imported thugs fighting with police and slagging off the Jews, but I suspect there may be [initially] a sense of giving Starmer a chance. The tourist season here is well below par again this year [reduced spending power in the First World] and - now that the IMF and China are involved working at their planned hegemonic duopoly - tourism and infrastructure projects put on hold plus over-leveraged accommodation speculators will start to lay people off and, in some cases, go to the wall. The same applies to smaller retailers suffering from a 16.7% inflation rate that can only squeeze the working class until they can no longer viably function. The moment when Devils find things for idle hands to do isn't that far off.
In the UK, the inflation rate is only 4% and the den of thieves at the Bank of England can still hide the inevitable with talk of reduced interest rates. In the US, the rate is just under 3.2%. Both the Fed and the BoE are gaily putting out puffery about reduced interest rates later this year, conveniently forgetting that both cupboards have been emptied by Covid, Permawar, welfare sprees and a host of other Bidenomic/NWO insanities. The US national debt more than doubled during 2023 - from $13 trillion to $34 trillion; the UK's debt exceeded 100% of gdp for the first time in 64 years for similar reasons.
But the Gambia is a minnow without the array of disguises enjoyed by the First World; in three years, the national debt here has grown 50% - globally, the debt is tiny but Washington [ie the IMF)] and Beijing are already extracting several kilos of flesh: a second port (for easy US troop access) is under way, and the Chinese are already ruffling feathers by installing factory fishing with the potential to wipe out the local fishing community. Add that to the other layoffs already mentioned, and we reach the tipping point: What happens when half-starved people have no money coming in at all and nothing to do?
I advise all of you to keep a close eye on the gather storm in Gambia. The coast is unlikely to remain as smiley as it has traditionally been. For once, a sub-saharan African nation will be a peek into the near future.
The Davos >> banker >> ecological looneys >> surveillance >> military complex knows perfectly well how nasty things could get when 7.8 billion Earthlings have had their savings digitally pilfered with nothing coming in. Hence the need to be rid of the Useless Eaters.
2024 is a pivotal year. Sleepwalk through it at your peril.
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