Economic Consequences of Covid-19
By Bill Lindo
Belize City. June 30th 2020
Belizeans, it’s time to stop believing there will be a magical vaccine for Covid-19. After 17 + years we still don’t have any vaccine for SARS, so how could we now presume they will develop one for SARS-CoV-2? Science doesn’t work like that (the oligarchs never learn, the whole is always greater than the parts), and the desire to extract some $ 8 trillion dollars from the global population for a vaccine will get nowhere. But panic and the relentless drive to strip us of our freedom to save us from a virus that could very well cost less than $100 to cure has already destroyed too many lives.
We all know that global economies have collapse in the last few months. The extent of the collapse has been dependent on how self-reliant the individual country’s economy was. Covid-19 has exposed the vulnerability of countries and people. The grinding poverty, malnutrition and even starvation for a growing portion of our population is now unfolding before our eyes, staring at us in our faces, with all its ugliness.
The collapse globally and in Belize has ushered in the complete breakdown of old paradigms. The Covid-19 Pandemic has pulled away the veil revealing our own society’s failures.
Many years ago, I warned our political leaders that building the economy of Belize only on the extraction of raw materials and tourism was irresponsible – that they were placing our foundation on sand, a very dangerous undertaking. Even the Bible warns us of putting all your eggs in one basket. No one listened. In March of this year, the sand moved and almost overnight 37% of the work-force of Belize was without a job and income. Poverty went from a rate of 58% to close to 65%. WOW!
I should note that not even the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition agreed that the pre-Covid poverty rate in Belize was 57.8%. Perhaps it was too much to fathom. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has proved me right. But how did Belize end up with such high rates of poverty?
Sometime ago, a family member told me that Belize’s society is based on “talking” on “telling stories” that’s why we have so many lawyers (my family are mostly lawyers). The lawyers are good at ‘talking” so they run for politics and are easily elected to govern Belize. However, lawyers usually take a brief, the majority of them work for who can pay them mega bucks. They certainly don’t all work for the common person. Thus Belize remains a neo-colonial society of the British variety and the notion of independence remains alien to most Belizeans.
Around 1970 the merchants were the dominant sector in Belize’s economy up to about 1975 when their power started to diminish as local manufacturing started to take off. But by 1992 the merchants were back and allied with tourism. Let’s use the concept of what economists call “visible trade” to see the results of that unholy alliance.
In 1970, Belize’s trade deficit was some $ 24 million dollars (43% of imports). We imported $ 55 million dollars value of goods and exported $ 31 million dollars of goods to pay for those imports. At the time of Independence in 1981, imports grew to $ 324 million dollars and exports to some $ 238 million for a trade deficit of $ 86 million dollars. The deficit was now down to 26% of imports. At the time, George Price was supporting local manufacturing and with it came an increasing standard of living and a growing and vibrant middle-class. The poverty rate was 23% at that time. Around 1991/1992 as the power of the merchants grew again and George Price’s power waned the trade deficit grew almost threefold. In 1993 the trade deficit was $ 298 million dollars, which was some 53% of imports. But again by 1996 there was a turn-around. Imports fell to $ 511 million dollars and exports increased to $ 335 and Belize only had a deficit of $ 176 million dollars (34% of imports). A science teacher and pragmatist, Prime Minister Esquivel was trying to make Belizeans live within their means.
Then suddenly at the turn of the century, imports jumped to $ 1.029 billion dollars, while exports remained nearly the same at some $ 390 million dollars. The trade deficit shot up to over $ 638 million dollars (62% of imports), and with it the rate of poverty to 33%. The deal between the merchants and the foreign owners of the tourist product was now sealed. As 2008 came to a close Belize was importing $ 1.7 billion dollars per year and selling $ 960 million dollars resulting in a trade deficit of about $ 796 million dollars. The rate of poverty also climbed to 43%. Last year (2019) Belize imported about $ 1.971 billion dollars in value of goods. We sold $ 924 million in goods ($36 million dollars less than 2008) and had a trade deficit of $ 1.047 billion dollars, while the poverty rate had climb to 57.8%.
Notice the trend above. Imports increased and exports could not keep up. Local manufacturing fell, foreign debt increased, and more Belizeans entered poverty.
Now lets’ look at the current international strategic situation:
- A wave of mass protests are sweeping the United States and the world. Provocateurs are channelling the opposition to the police and other institutions;
- The once promising improved relations between the USA and China have turned to a point of open talks of economic warfare, decoupling, and even a threatening new Cold War;
- There is a brazen British attempt to radically polarize the United States into civil war conditions, and to provoke a constitutional crisis between the elected President and the US military. Put simply, George Floyd has become the prop for the third phase of the coup d’état being conducted against the United States presidency. The Atlantic (dated June 6th) says that a colour revolution is underway in the United States and quotes Anglo-American professor and intelligence regime-change operations advocate, Gene Sharp in support of this claim.
- The plan is to remove Trump, the obstacle to the transnational elites’ plan to maintain and consolidate their power. In the wake of Covid-19’s death and destruction most sane people had begun to question why these elites should continue to hold any power at all.
- Do not be fooled by “Black Lives Matter”. They are a fake. Their agenda is the same as their right wing allies – the white racists of Identity Europa and White Identity. Antifa and Steve Bannon’s racist Alt Right Gamers want the same thing – the “devolution of the United States into racially homogenous city-state communities”, which they boldly advocated for in their founding document, and the end of the nuclear family and God. Funding for Black Lives Matter is provided by the Ford Foundation[1], Borealis Philanthropy, George Soros, Democracy Alliance (Silicon Valley billionaires), and the big boys of Hollywood. If the oligarchy funds you, who owns you?
The dream of Dr Martin Luther King was completely different. He insisted that social justice was to seen as providing people with productive jobs (manufacturing) and ultimately raising the wages for all the forgotten men, not just blacks, so that the whole population would be lifted into the middle class. He also supported allowing blacks’ access to the ground-breaking work of the time, nuclear energy and space exploration. He felt these high-order work was a precondition for black and all poor people’s admission to higher living standards.
Belizeans need to understand that the location of “systemic racism” is in the Anglo-Dutch imperium, in the divide-and-conquer techniques and “identity politics” used to control subject populations for centuries. The central plank of British imperial colonial policy for decades was that when the subjects get restless, manipulate them to kill each other, using racial or religious divisions as the triggers, if possible. The British have for centuries known that there will be opposition to their imperial renter-finance-exploitation, so they have always establish a “so-called opposition” to drive the legitimate opposition to their oligarchical destructive policies into a dead-end. Right after World War I, MI6 formed the Muslin Brotherhood to destroy Arab unity against their imperial exploitation of the Arab world. Stokely and the Black Panters was one such entity, used by the CIA and FBI against Dr Martin Luther King. Today we have Black Lives Matter. In Belize, the neo-colonial masters use drugs and gangs to destroy our youth – the future of Belize. When Belize became a post-industrial society, like the Americans we ended up with over 80% of the population with less than 5% of the wealth. In the United States there are impoverished whites and people of colour. In Belize there are people of colour in a classist society. Those in charge of pacifying and controlling this class have used race and drugs to set them against one another and blind them to their common circumstances and their ability to shape a different destiny. For the forgotten men and women of America, Covid-19 was the last straw in an economy which historically had not worked for them.
With Covid-19, the globalist system took a huge hit to its legitimacy, a hit exacerbated by the oversold and crumbling speculative-casino economy which once again was teetering on the edge of collapse, and had been since September 2019. To halt the spread of the coronavirus, countries closed their borders and restricted travel. This ultimately affected globalisation and unveiled the overt reliance on policies that support just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing of the production of things like PPEs and medical equipment. These policies also contributed to the widespread disaster and deaths; fundamentally, the lockdown has caused more problems than the virus itself. At a time when the biosciences have advanced spectacularly, the virus is being fought with medieval tools.
To analyse and contextualise all this it’s useful to first look at the situation which the oligarchs, the world’s financial elites, find themselves in, and what they are doing about it. In Belize this is quite obvious to the population – the lord of the plantation has made moves to bankrupt the government and ultimately the people. He plans to take complete control of the entire banking sector, and he has the nerve to publically boost that he owns one of the major political parties and its leader. WOW!
Belize’s greatest conflict has always been between those, who, like our American System revolutionaries (George Cadle Price, Phillip Goldson, Leroy Taegar, Evan X Hyde, and Bill Lindo), believe that humans are endowed with divine powers in the form of their individual creativity and the oligarchs, who see men and women as beasts, governed by their impulses and desires and the means by which they can be manipulated in their schemes. We believe that unlike beasts, humans can change and alter nature and expand their populations, inventing whole new resources in the process. In economic terms, the Belizean revolutionaries believe in exploiting nature rather than man. We know that using technology (science and engineering) in the production processes of agriculture and manufacturing is the only way to keep increasing the standard of living of our citizens.
The imperialist oligarchs, on the other hand, believe their economic systems are entropic, dependent on looting raw materials and wealth from subject populations. The main method used by imperial systems has always been financial empires, controlled by a financial oligarchy that are inherently Malthusian. They believe their continued power rests on reducing populations since their system can never produce sustained economic growth. As Britain’s Prince Phillip famously put it, in 1988, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” We should ask the British Lord visiting his plantation which system he thinks is best.
So Now, what is the future of Belize? David Malpass, President of the World Bank, on June 7th told the BBC that tourism will likely not return to its glory days and most likely it will be about ten years before it returns to the economic status it once held. Christopher de Bellaigue[2] writing in the UK Guardian reiterated that notion – tourism has little relevance or future in the post-Covid-19 world.
What is our alternative? If Belize wants to supply its citizens with a high standard of living then we must do the following:
- Industrialize our economy with modern manufacturing
- Create family farms of at least 150 acres to create a healthy and independent population
- Transform our universities to educate our citizens in science and engineering
- Establish a program for our youth to train and offer them productive jobs in manufacturing
- Set the minimum wage equal to a living wage at $ 12 per hour
- Put government deposits in the National Bank of Belize, especially now that Caribbean Investment Holdings Limited (CIHL) is set to buy out Scotia Bank (BELIZE) Ltd.
These policies have be known to contribute to the flourishing of modern economies we see around the world. Then, a high-speed railway and energy independence from sources like nuclear reactors wouldn’t not seem so out of reach.
In addition, Belize MUST NEVER enter an IMF restructuring program. Why? In every Article IV review the IMF has recommended that Belize reduce its public work-force by one-third to one-half. In Covid-19 they have not altered their conditions for access to finance. We need to understand that now with 37% of our work-force without an income – through no fault of their own – how can we as humans demand that another 8,000 + families be without an income? It seems the craziness caused by the breakdown of our societies have turn us into animals – no longer man made in the image of his Creator. Be it the American or British System of Capitalism – demand is the key. No income, no demand. No income, no energy. No energy, no life. Should the government ever reduce its workforce by over 8,000 at the same time when over 37% of the work-force is already without income, it would be tantamount to murder.
Another demand of the IMF is to again privatize the public utilities. They believe that they should have never been made part of the people of Belize’s assets, in other words, sell BTL, BEL, BWS to foreign investors to help repay the new foreign loans for Covid-19. The IMF also repeatedly demands that the Government of Belize must ensure that our labour-force wages become flexible, that is, wage-rates must be equivalent to those of our neighbours in Honduras or Guatemala. Instead of the measly $ 40/day the average workers now gets, they suggest cutting it to about $ 15/day. In addition, the IMF feels that the National Bank of Belize should either be closed or sold to the private sector, preferable to a foreign owner. Let me remind you, the purpose of the National Bank of Belize is to finance the development of Belize. Now it is uncertain that will ever happen with the pending buy over of Scotiabank operations in Belize. The IMF[3] has made it very clear that Covid-19 has changed nothing; those seeking loans from the Fund for Covid-19 must also follow their long-standing policy prescriptions. Their loans are not without conditions.
The program I outlined above is the appropriate response to the murder of George Floyd and the destruction of Covid-19. We would realize in the process, both the dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr and the actual goals of the peaceful and constructive Belizean revolution. Of course, this is the antithesis of those who carry a brief for the oligarchs. Do what Hon. Said Musa instructed years ago – follow the money.
Already we are being told that pensions for civil servants are not sustainable. They will be cut out. Civil servants get less pay than the private sector, but after retirement they get a pension. You take away that pension and you have exploited that person. In September 21st, 1981 Belize finally received its independence from the British. Let’s act like we deserved that independence and can keep it.
Belizeans, the 80%, who are the forgotten man and woman, you now have a chance to force a change in your life. I don’t think this moment in history will come for another hundred years or more. Will this great moment in history find a little people?
Later this year Belize will have a general election. Look at the facts, not political parties, but programs. Don’t believe the lies and propaganda. If none of the major political parties support a written pledge to industrialize Belize, create family farms, pay workers a living wage and make the National Bank truly functional, then as sure as the rising sun, you Belizeans will as Silky said in his poem, reap the whirlwind – “the wild winds of your foolish desire”. Remember, you are not beasts or animals – you are made in the image of your Creator.
Long live Belize!
[1] https://www.americanexperiment.org/article/ford-foundation-will-fund-black-lives-matter-big-time/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/jun/18/end-of-tourism-coronavirus-pandemic-travel-industry
[3] https://www.imf.org/en/About/FAQ/imf-response-to-covid-19
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