Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

A Marshall Plan for Creditors and Speculators Michel Chossudovsky FOLLOWING the dramatic nosedive of the Russian rouble, financial markets around the world had plummeted to abysmally low levels. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on August 31, its second largest decline in the history of the New York Slock Exchange. In the uncertain wake of 'black September 1998', G-7 ministers of finance had gathered hastily in Washington. On their political agenda; a multibillion dollar plan to avert the risks of a worldwide financial meltdown. In the words of its political architects US treasury secretary Robert Rubin and UK chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown: "we must do more to...limit the swings of booms and busts that destroy hope and diminish wealth".1 Announced by president Bill Clinton in late October, the G-7 proposal to install a 90 billion dollar fund "to help protect vulnerable but essentially healthy nations" from currency and stock market speculation will go down in history as the biggest financial scam of the post-war era.

Michel Chossudovsky Almost 10 years after Black Monday, October 19, 1987, Wall Street experienced its largest one-day decline since 1987 on Friday, August 15, 1997. The symptoms were similar to those of Black Monday. In the weeks that followed, however, business forecasters and academic economists alike have casually disregarded the dangers, alluding to 'strong economic fundamentals'. The realities are concealed, economic statistics are manipulated and economic concepts are turned upside down, when actually the stock market frenzy has taken place against a background of global economic decline and social dislocation.

kept quiet.
The other incident related to an article on poverty measurement by P D Ojha, published in the RBI Bulletin, (It is generally not known that the RBI was a pioneer on this theme the detailed study by Dandekar and Rath, employing similar yet more refined methodology, appeared a year later.) Somebody, probably the banking secretary, drew the attention of the finance minister (Y B Chavan) to the propriety of publishing such a 'subversive' article in the RBI Bulletin. The finance minister mentioned this to Jagannathan, who replied whether it would have suited the government if the author instead of 'poverty' had used the word 'malnutrition'.

Dismantling Former Yugoslavia Recolonising Bosnia Michel Chossudovsky WESTERN public opinion has been misled; the plight of former Yugoslavia is the outcome of an "aggressive nationalism', the inevitable result of deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions which have their roots in history.[l]The 'Balkans' power-play' is the focal point, the global media has highlighted the clash of political personalities: "Tudjman and Milosevic are tearing Bosnia-Herzegovina to picces'', [2] Western mediation concluding with the Dayton Airforce Base Agreement in November 1995 is narrowly portrayed as the means to 'restoring peace' in Bosnia-Herzegovina, while contributing under the hallmark of 'the free market' to the rebuilding of the newly sovereign states.

Debt and Democracy in Brazil Michel Chossudovsky Micheline Ladouceur Under a recent agreement with international creditors on the restructuring of its commercial debt, Brazil will have to put in place reforms which will he a lethal blow to its social programmes which are already in an advanced stage of decay due to successive 'shock therapies'.