Globalization

Financing Globalization

Free trade or cheap trade is facilitated by a variety of international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These institutions loan money to developing nations under specific conditions that often dismantle state-run industries and eliminate state-run social, work, and health programs thus harming local citizens while increasing the profits of the transnational companies.

Thus, some economists say historical colonialism and jingoism now exist under the guise of Western loans through the World Bank, IMF structural adjustment programs and multinational corporate exploitation of third world nations through the WTO. Liberalized trade laws and a skewed decision-making structure benefited wealthy nations and transnational corporations while harming less developed and industrial nations. This global structure tolerates repressive regimes, forces population movements, and facilitates genocide, destroys the environment, and violates the human rights of indigenous peoples while damaging health and social welfare programs.

For example, in 1992, the U.S. corporation Occidental Petroleum muscled a deal with the state of Colombia to drill an oil well on the reservation land of the indigenous U'wa people, destroying their land and usurping their power. Similarly in Nigeria, the Ogoni people, an indigenous ethnic minority, have been the victims of a corrupt alliance between the state and Shell Oil Company since 1958, when Shell began exploiting oil and natural gas reserves leading to oil spills, and air and groundwater pollution. Finally, in Ecuador, ARCO, Shell, and Texaco—preceded by the rubber companies in the early 20th century—have used violence and debt bondage to exploit the labor and land of indigenous tribes. Since 1970, this type of corporate colonization has displaced 18,000 people from 247,000 acres of land in Ecuador.

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