The IMF, Carlyle Group, and factotums

The IMF, Carlyle Group, and factotums
May 27, 2001

“The capitalists will sell the very rope from which we will hang them.” Vladimir Lenin

1. A four-step globalization by the IMF

At the conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire after the WWII, the IMF was established to help finance the reconstruction of war-torn Europe and the development of the poor countries of the world and to regulates an international monetary system based on convertible currencies so as to facilitate global trade.
Since early 1980, the IMF in conjunction with its sister institution, the World Bank, has become a pointman, manager, policeman, enforcer, or rent-a-cop, whatever critics describe the IMF’s role, in the employ of the international credit syndicate that twists the arms of reluctant governments to remove restrictions on domestic businesses and to ensure the free flow of capitals into and out of their countries.

The IMF always enforced the basic pattern of four-step conditionality on the loan-begging nations in order to ensure that the loans are paid back in due process or otherwise the borrowers are condemned to death.
South Korea was a lender’s dream country in the1997 financial crisis where ordinary citizens took the gold bullion out of their mattress and carried to the banks for the payments of the foreign debts that they have got nothing to do with.
In addition, the world financiers were blessed with the election of their poster boy, DJ Kim, a comprador president who is eager to sell anything and everything for money on a bargain price to the foreign corporations and to throw out thousands of workers in the street in the name of restructuring (apropos of bulldozing).

Step one is Privatization…in order to raise money to pay back the foreign debts, the IMF vigorously encourages to sell off every public enterprises, such as water, electricity, or transportation facilities, to the highest bidder, usually profit-seeking foreign corporations, no matter whether the utility company makes a healthy profit or loses money. The state is not going to be the custodian of their citizens, but the guardian of the international investors, ensuring that the organized union actions against the enterprises are dealt with batons and pepper-spray and accrued interest plus original loans are assured of repatriation without any delay if the investors wish.

In order to facilitate the step one, the Step two is necessary…the market-based pricing, a euphemism for price increases on food, utility bills, gas and other essential goods that were subsidized by the government.
When the nation is under the heavy financial burden and gasping to keep its head above the water, the IMF wants to squeeze the last pound of blood out of them under the banner of fiscal austerity.
In this stage, there were many countries under the social unrest, in Indonesia, South Korea, Bolivia, Ecuador, and other poor nations under the IMF guide lines.

Third step is capital market liberalization…no state regulations on foreign exchange market are allowed and the value of currency is pegged to the US dollar as well as no restriction on what foreign businesses and banks are allowed to buy, own, and operate.
In South Korea, the state rescued one of half-dead bank with the taxpayer’s money, sold to the Newbridge Corp. in US with the loss of millions of dollars, and it is called restructuring.
In this stage, the IMF lends enough to prevent default on international loans that are about to come due and arrange a restructuring of the country’s debt among private international lenders.

The forth step is free trade by the rules of World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Bank, opening the consumer market wide to the juggernaut industrial nations that floods with fast food (McDonald’s, Domino Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken), durable goods (automobiles, machinery, military hardware) and intellectual properties (IT industries, Pharmaceutical companies).
Recently, one of the US Senators tabled the Free Trade Bill between the US and South Korea in the US Congress, indicating that the IMF is successfully implementing their four-step measures to seize the South Korean economy under the yoke of the international lenders and corporations, such as Citicorp, Salomon Brothers, Newbridge Corp. JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Carlyle Group.

2. the Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a leading private equity firm in America that epitomizes the incestuous ties between the Bush Administration and the corporate world.
The main business of equity company is to buy half-dead businesses with bargain price and then resell them for hefty profit open to only the wealthiest players like George H W Bush, James Baker (former Secretary of State), John Major (former British Prime Minister), Fidel Ramos (former Philippines President), Park Tae-joon (ex-Prime Minister of the South Korea),and other international dignitaries.
The Group has ownership stakes in 164 companies which last year employed more than 70,000 people and generated $16 billion in revenues, and 450 institutions like the California and Texas state pension fund, former fund with $305 million and latter $100million, are Carlyle’s investors.

The Carlyle is the eleventh largest defense contractor in the Pentagon, in which the Group owns the companies making tanks, aircraft wings and other military equipment, and is also heavily invested in telecommunications.
Frank Carlucci is its chairman, who was a former defense secretary under President Ronald Reagan and a close friend of George H W Bush whose son is the current President of the US.
Bush Sr. was in South Korea when Carlyle was acquiring KorAm Bank, meeting with DJ Kim and Prime Minister to facilitate the sale.
Carlyle’s connection to the Bush family date back more than a decade and the current President of the US could, in the future, benefit financially from his own administration’s decision on military budget through the inheritance from his father’s investments in the Group.

After the 1997 financial crisis in Seoul, many foreign investors jumped on the fire sales of bad assets companies in the DJ regime’s policy of “Privatization through Liquidation”, acquiring billions of dollars in non-performing loans (NPLs) with 30 percent of their face value and resell them with double margin.
In the predatory pursuit of business activities, the US-based investment companies employed a few second-generation Korean-Americans as their forward agent and representative.

3. the Korean-American compradors

Recently, Peter Chung, a 24-year-old, Princeton-educated Korean-American associate who was hired by the Carlyle Group, was mired in the hornet’s nest when his email message on his hedonic life in Seoul was reported in the financial newspapers in Wall Street.
He boasted to his friends in his email that he was living in Seoul like a king with a harem of young chicks and enjoying every night with booze and dance parties at the posh nightclub pro bono. He even asked his friend in the US fedexing a box of condoms because his inventory is very low and he was happy that the vice president of KorAm Bank drives him around with a Porsche (one of three cars in South Korea).
He was booted out.

In South Korea, many Korean expatriates return to their ancestral country for work in the private company or for service in the US military bases, and these hyphenated Koreans are hired or based specifically in Korea because their boss assumed that they are somewhat in tune with the same wavelength on the environment of host country.
However, there is a fallacy assuming that a person with the Korean complexion with a full brain of American culture can claim a Korean-American, because the person’s connection to Korea only remains in the realm of physical appearances and genealogical ancestry.
Some are American-born, non-bilingual, and no less American than an Apple pie, who do not understand an iota of Korean culture, history, or custom, and do not want to know they are physically Koreans until they face the mirror every morning before setting out for work.

The Carlyle Group and US military want them to play a role of loyal factotum who knows the ropes of the host country and establish a homogenous niche with native people, as the Japanese lords during the colonial occupation in Korea hired thousands of Koreans as errand boys, low-level bureaucrats, cops, soldiers, and some ranking officers like former dictator, Gen. CH Park.
During the Japanese occupation, thousands of Korean sellouts have collaborated as factotums with the Japanese colonialists, torturing, jailing, exploiting and deporting many compatriots.
After the liberation from Japan in 1945, they were hired again by the US military, supporting and establishing new regime of Rhea government that was thrown out by Korean people in 1960 revolt.

There are also plenty of bootlicking native Koreans who would entertain these factotums with lavish meals, parties, and young hostesses in order to obtain favorable business deals, and these practices have been taken for granted by the foreign investors and their agents that the native companies are willing to foot the bill of several thousands dollars per night.
When critics rail against the shameful business culture in dealing with foreigners, one of the business executives refuted, “Hey, there is nothing that is not common knowledge, and everybody does it. Even our government does it, entertaining eight thousands of foreign participants in the Asia Forum with free meals, while hungry people queue up for free lunch at the railway station.
He added, “DJ Kim is a Maestro of comprador, a Toscanini of sellout, and a diva of turncoat.”