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There's a book called confessions of an economic hit man - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...

Essentially U.S. helps impoverished nations with infrastructure and other aid, but saddles them with debt in order to control them politically or otherwise.

The interesting part was when it came to Saudi Arabia, which had so much money it didn't need to take on debt to develop their infrastructure. So instead they bought America's debt as this article explains.

I lived in the kingdom from '82 - '04 which was quite an interesting time span to have lived there. Things have definitely changed as a younger, mostly western educated generation, returns home and social unrest cannot be quelled with unlimited social programs anymore.

Most of the Saudi's I know now simply take american concepts/franchises and spin them out over there. From hamburger chains to house cleaning services. Works pretty well for them.

The most annoying thing was the weekends were on Thursday and Friday, so if you wanted to do anything international with a bank you could only do it Mon - Wed as their banks were closed on their weekends and then U.S. banks were closed Sat / Sun.

I believe you can still simply walk to a certain part of town and watch an execution, along with a couple of hands once a week there. Just you know, if you wanted something to do on a weekend.

The funny thing about debt is that it's looked at as a fundamental force of nature and not from a political economic relationship. The debt is owed to someone. Someone, somewhere is getting the interest payments. The duty of a debtor to pay the lender is enforced politically. The creation of fiat currency is controlled by the central bank, etc.

The Chinese realize this. On a political basis, they regularly buy up and write down bad loans with money the government electronically prints itself. This wouldn't work in our democratic system because politicized debt forgiveness is too obvious of a way to buy votes. Instead we have the fed buy bad debts from the banks in a form of politicized bad investment forgiveness, but the debts never go away and the taxpayer is partially stuck with the bill and hence austerity in the form of government bailouts.

> hence austerity in the form of government bailouts.

I don't follow your point here. "Austerity" and "government bailout" are antithetical.

Am fairly sure he meant the government bailouts of banks. There's been quite a few recently.

But that's by definition the opposite of austerity.

I'd love to hear more. Where you married? What was it like for you spouse? If not, what was the dating scene like in 82?

Did you travel around any? What are the most interesting parts of the country? Did you ever make it to Mecca?

How good are you at recognizing family names and power connections? Did that come with time?

How did people in different parts of the country view each other?

I just returned from a week in Jeddah and Riyadh. Here are some photos from a fancy jail. Housing some of the 5000 terrorist/jihadists in a re-integration program. Think about that, the jihadists get the nice jail, because they are rehabilitatable: http://www.daviddegner.com/albums/terrorist-rehab-in-saudi-a...

Someone a few weeks back recommended Inside The Kingdom in a reply to a comment of mine - I can strongly recommend it:

http://www.robertlacey.com/?q=book/inside-kingdom

It describes the length the Saudi's go to in rehabilitating jihadists - including getting them married!

Think about that, the jihadists get the nice jail, because they are rehabilitatable

This is infinitely more humane than the current US strategy of drone strikes, "kills terrorists" never mind the collateral damage and disruption it causes. Hell our DOC could learn a few things. Here, if you are ever once a criminal, you're a criminal for life.

I quite agree with you that the Saudis' approach here is much less horrible!

>Here, if you are ever once a criminal, you're a criminal for life

OTOH, recidivism for sorcery must be pretty low over in the Kingdom, since the punishment for this crime (?) is beheading (!).

The fact that anybody would ever get convicted for sorcery tells you all you need to know.

No dating scene whatsoever haha. Restaurants all segregated family / single males. No movie theatres. Entire country dry no alcohol.

The most amusing of all would be safe ways and grocery stores would turn into night club entrances as all the women would be shopping so guys would drive by the entrance and hold up signs with their phone numbers on them. So front of Safeway on a weekend night would be all these sports cars, benz's Etc. Too funny.

Jeddah a lot more lax than Riyadh.

Can't get into Mecca unless you're Muslim. We took a wrong turn on a road trip one time and were stopped and made to turn around.

Check points outside every city. If you were a female and didn't have written consent from your husband you weren't allowed to leave the city.

The IMF primarily.

Yes the US takes part in that, but the organization is the IMF.

The IMF partially realizes their role in this, but its more of an outcome than a conspiracy. They've commented on that book in an interesting non-denial, basically saying that the GDP of the countries they've helped/subjected-in-a-giant-conspiracy is so low and such a small fraction of the IMF budget that it doesn't make sense that they would put much effort in it.

In any case, its just the terms of their contracts. Country can't pay, country must raise taxes or expropriate goods, or find natural resources.

> Yes the US takes part in that, but the organization is the IMF.

To be clear: The IMF and World Bank are primarily controlled by the Western powers. EDIT: And are seen as tools of Western power by many.

The current US Secretary of the Treasury is the most influential member of the IMF, with 16.66% of the total voting power (Jacob Lew) [1]. He was promoted to his current posts shortly after banking on the 2008 economic collapse with Citi.

[1]https://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx#3

I'd add that I think the Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, is considered the most influential person, though I'm not sure how the voting works.

The deal long (or always?) has been that a European runs the IMF (Legarde) and an American runs the World Bank, currently Jim Yong Kim. As you might imagine, the rest of the world feels a bit left out.

> Country can't pay, country must raise taxes or expropriate goods, or find natural resources.

Or sell infrastructure to private industries (this is what the economic hit man interview I saw claimed)

> The interesting part was when it came to Saudi Arabia, which had so much money it didn't need to take on debt to develop their infrastructure.

That's not entirely accurate. Saudi Arabia was extraordinarily poor prior to Standard Oil of California's oil finds there. US companies financed most of Saudi Arabia's initial oil infrastructure build out, including the technology that made it all possible in the first place.

The initial wells and basic infrastructure. But everything built since the 70s-80s, ie 95+% of the country, was financed directly. The amount of money swimming around that country put any overseas investment to shame long ago.

^^^

There is a new edition of the book mentioned above if anyone's interested: "The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man."

Thanks for the heads up. I read the original in college and it was very interesting, although I thought it was a bit embellished.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man/dp/16...

I read it a good few years back and found it interesting although I was slightly skeptical about to what degree the conspiracies described existed outside of the author's head.

However, being older and somewhat more cynical (particularly after binge reading about the UK involvement in the Iraq and Afghan Wars) I do wonder if I should read this again - are there any materials out there that support his claims?

I also read the book, and what he describes is pretty much classic, straightforward bribery of foreign officials. There's a lot of embellishment by the author for the sake of hinting at broader conspiracies he didn't personally witness, and to aggrandize his own role in the matter.

I read the book and it didn't seem like it was embellished in anyway.

Where were you? I was in SA from 79-95 as a kid in various Aramco compounds, mostly RT and DH.

Riyadh, but wasn't in aaramco or military. We lived in the middle of the city. Small 5 villa compound. Saudi neighbors.

The student debt indenture system is the same thing in the microcosm.

Was does the debt force you to do other than hold a job? Heaven forbid. Nobody forced you to take money.

If anything it's a coup for politicians who want to push debt forgiveness as one of their platforms. Get everyone into debt and then offer forgiveness for votes.

When your life depends on holding a job, you are less likely to question the system that provides said job.

Similarly, "homeowners" are less likely to riot...

And prop up a sector that donates a fair amount of money to political campaigns.

"Nobody forced you to take the money."

Prices rise to what the market will bear. Cheap debt means the market will "bear" more than it would in a less leveraged society.

If everyone but me takes a loan, the price of tuition goes up. This means I now have to take a loan or not go to school (which means I can't get a job).

Same happens with housing. If everyone but me takes out a jumbo mortgage, prices go up and I now must take out a jumbo mortgage or forego homeownership.

As long as a degree is a required piece of paper to obtain most jobs, college will be a requirement. As long as rent offers no equity and mortgage interest (but not rent) is deductible, homeownership will remain one of the middle class's sole paths to the accumulation of wealth.

Today's wacky "in-deflationary" economic condition can continue as long as central banks hold interest rates near zero and wages are stagnant.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent

The economy is circular. The money created through the loan benefits the entire economy, going from hand to hand. you don't consume money or burn them. Then its unfair to burden one group or say one country (like Greece) to have to pay through the nose for the activity that everybody benefits from. This is basic macro-economics. The root cause of debt slavery and financial troubles we have can be solved by separating the creation of money from lending. In a democracy the power to create money should lie with the people not private banks. If the politicians misbehave you can vote then out of office unlike the CEO of Goldman Sachs at al

We've got piles of people with degrees in <SomeGroup> Studies, working as waiters and waitresses. The money that was spent housing and feeding them as students for 4+ years, paying the professors and administrators, could have been used more productively in some other pursuit. As you note, it's not quite equivalent to burning the money. But it's still a net loss, and given its size, it's not insignificant.

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