e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 31 December 2023 – 06 January 2024

The President, in his imported New Year blue suit with fading blue tie, announces deploying a Sri Lankan Navy ship into the roiling Red Sea at a cost of Rs250million per fortnight. He hopes to thwart depreciation of the Rupee in case shipping companies hike their prices claiming diversion around the Cape of Tempests of South Africa (which last week took Israel – tho not their bloodier sponsors, the USA – to the International Court of Justice for genocide).

     The President’s announcement was reported first in his family newspapers – mouthpieces & mirrors for the embassy whites & their white-Blacks – to signal support for the US genocide in West Asia. Almost immediately, the SLNavy clarifies they are doing a ‘feasibility’ study on the matter.

     The President, desperately seeking allies outside of his fading blue alliance (hence the paling tie), announces this, just as the chair of Exxon-Rockefeller International – whose ‘Foundation’ plays godfather to all US NGOs behind the Aragalaya, also funding fake reconciliations – lands in the country to demand further opening up of labor laws, midst a lot of diabetic sugar coating about how wonderful Sri Lanka’s other prospects are.

     Astute observers note the public jettisoning of so-called nonalignment – let alone the open media-celebrated arrival of an oily Rockefeller agent – as further evidence of the extent of US infiltration of an ostensibly independent Sri Lankan state.

     The US wars in West Asia have aimed to cut off if not control South & East Asia’s access to energy sources. If Africa decides to intercept such ships, as they surely will one day, what will the President, & all his import-export-loving corporate sponsors, economists & other yipping poodles, do?

     The President bared his Red Sea revelation at the end of a speech at the National Handicrafts Exhibition, and at the BMICH, of all places! Handicrafts are a very quaint epitome of our colonial underdevelopment & stultification, as we are prevented from advancing to modern machine industry. The BMICH – an enduring construct of SL-China Friendship!

     A day later on 4 January, Air Force Commander Air Marshall Udeni Rajapksa is beckoned to meet US Ambassador & lost-Korean kurumitta Julie Chung, to discuss ‘Security Cooperation’ & ‘Maritime Security’. On 5 January, US-installed former President M Sirisena is also come-hithered to discuss ‘the political & economic landscape in the year to come.’ with Chung (see ee Sovereignty, ‘Helplessness & Confusion’ in the Coming Year – Thoradeniya).

     Imperialism plays all sides, so no matter who wins, they always have a friend. Of course, they actually have no friends – they only have interests. They aim to use the imminent turmoil they have provoked to prepare for the US military’s entrance to set up their new 8^th Fleet Base in Sri Lanka – joining their other ‘unsinkable aircraft carriers’: US-occupied Palestine (aka Israel), Bahrain (US Navy Central Command), & Hawaii (US Pacific Command base). – see ee Random Notes, 8^th Fleet

     A ‘Galle Concerto 2024’ is offering European literary & musical flatulence within Sri Lanka’s Ruhuna heartland, as soothing overtures to disaster. Let us recall that the post-1814 military-diplomatic ‘Concert of Europe’ was set up to unite the whites against the rest of the world, as well as undermine the Ottoman Empire (of which Israel is a white settler legatee). The 1815 soft-coup against the last redoubt of Sinhale (in the highlands) was their first prize (with the 1818 genocide soon after). This new ‘Concert of Europe’ (including all its settler states) awards prizes to literature as long as they sing the whites’ anti-Sinhala-Buddhist & anti-China baila.

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‘Do an unelected group of bureaucrats

staffing the Central Bank of a country

know better than the elected representatives

of the people and what is in their best interests?’

– Bram & Howard Nicholas (see ee Focus)

• Not Corruption But Capitalism! – Former USAID employee Dushni Weerakoon currently an Appointed Member of the Monetary Policy Board of the Central Bank & a Director of the Board of Investment (BOI), has joined the Cargills board as an Independent, Non-Executive Director. This is apparently not a conflict of interest or corruption. After all, recall that former Supreme Court Chief Justice K Siripavan joined the board of US World Bank-IFC-controlled Commercial Bank, ostensibly owned by John Keells Holdings (JKH). Weerakoon is also a director of this American Express-linked Nations Trust Bank (NTB) owned by JKH, Canada’s Fairfax’s HWIC Asia Fund, and Central Finance. She is also Executive Director of the Institute of Policy Studies of SL (IPS), whose studies are now thakata-thei with US thinktank Advocata (financed by US Atlas International, see ee Focus).

     Weerakoon accompanies Ganesan Ampalavanar, who was also made a Non-Independent, Non-Executive Director. A Malaysian citizen, Ganesan served Nestle Group, 3 times as CEO (Nestle Indonesia, Nestle Vietnam, Nestle SL). – see ee Finance, Cargills appoints Dushni & Ganesan to board

     The mushrooming of numerous Cargills Food City & Keells supermarkets (sometimes in the same vicinity) is causing the shuttering down of numerous neighbouring smaller kadays across the country. Not only shops, the government has provided these corporates with tons of import licenses and control over marketing & transport of goods. Switzerland’s Nestles is the dominant monopoly in dairy in Sri Lanka, behind the subversion & privatization of the National Milk Board.

     Retail companies like Keells & Cargills Food City, fronted by such Parsi-capitalists as Rusi & Soli Captain, and Chettiar capitalists like the Pages, guided by US Rockefeller’s Citibank, promote rotten Kentucky Fried Chicken, etc. They have made massive profits in Sri Lanka in the last few years, often outpacing the rate of inflation. These profits are sparking further inflation, mainly due to market concentration. The Annual Reports of these companies also provide fascinating reading (literature not highlighted at arts festivals!). The US government’s USAID is also financing Cargills electric vehicle charging stations. Cargills & Keells have also extended their tenacles into leasing, while pushing impoverished people into leasing only.

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     The US government’s demand for a new Central Bank Act has been fulfilled. This will bring Sri Lanka’s economy under further US control, just as all of Europe was first brought under US-military-occupied Germany’s Bundesbank, with Germany itself now under the Wall-Street-run US Federal Reserve. This is being blamed for the abandonment of all pretenses about Europe’s yearning for social democracy, which turns out to be the old muse for rising fascism (see ee Focus).

     It is therefore fitting that we look at the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s Alternative Program for Finance & Banking & Digital Transformation. The CPSL notes that the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) supervises the 32 banks that own the majority of the assets in the financial sector of Sri Lanka; and how the People’s Bank & Bank of Ceylon meant to fulfil citizens’ investment needs have been hijacked to operate more like commercial banks, undermining those engaged in productive activities who need financial support.

     As for so-called corruption in high places, the US has inspired India’s Supreme Court to absolve the Indian PM Modi-Linked Adani Corporation recently charged for stock manipulation.  The USA’s International Development Finance Corporation has stamped their approval of the Adani Colombo port project, to apparently counterbalance ‘Chinese investment’, in Hambantota, etc. The blocking of Hambantota port as a hub for southern industrialization has also been at their behest. The Financial Times in October reviewed customs records to show how the Adani Group, which is India’s largest coal importer, used offshore middlemen in Taiwan, Singapore & Dubai, to import coal at highly inflated prices – at more than double the prevailing market rate.’

     Meanwhile, India is gaming the US-Russia divide, after Russia promised to support their initiative to ‘manufacture combat hardware under the Made in India program’.

     This ee News includes an interview with Russia’s Central Banker & ‘Anti-Sanctions Tsarina’, who should be contrasted to Sri Lanka’s central banker who has been exposed as a US agent. Elvira Nabiullina is seen as an example of a citizen who defends her country. She explains how Russia games several scenarios in order to protect its workers from monetary devaluation, etc.

      Meanwhile the US, facing defeat in the Ukraine as well as West Asia, wants the Group of 7 (G7) major industrialized nations to explore ways to confiscate $300billion worth of the assets they have frozen. Like other central banks, Russia’s Central Bank placed some of its gold & foreign exchange reserves in liquid assets, eg major currencies, gold, & government bonds. About half of those reserves were held in the white West. Central Bank Governor Nabiullina was criticized by nationalists for allowing such a large chunk of the bank’s reserves to be frozen… But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says ‘If something is confiscated from us, we will look at what we will confiscate,’ adding. ‘We will do this immediately.’ (see ee Economists)

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• Media reported the Colombo Tea Auction was suspended because ‘they have no idea as to how VAT would affect their operations’. There were rumors however that both Dilmah’s and Akbar’s tea offices were raided for tax-related fraud. Their imports (tea, packaging &other value addition inputs) are all VAT-deferred, cos importation is done under the premise of full re-export. But they only re-export a portion of it. Some of their goods are instead sold here. Some say we should thank the IMF for such housecleaning, but both companies were set to boycott the tea auction on Thursday, which could have temporarily crashed the tea market. Some suggest this may just drive up the price? But it’s the opposite. These 2 are the biggest buyers. So the tea could well sit in factories and rot. The factories won’t be able to sell their tea. Perhaps the President is trying to ensure his corporate vote bank does not stray, so let’s see how all this pans out. The bets are on: elections being postponed through some sort of extra-parliamentary jilmart… (see ee Agriculture, VAT impacts start of Colombo Tea Auction) Capitalist elections are the best democracy that dollars can buy, haha…

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All of the references in our introduction are backed up by our teeming ee News Compendium below. Please remember to note monopolistic agencies are usually behind any repetitive news….

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Contents:

US Sets up Sri Lanka as 8th Fleet Indo-Pacific Military Base