e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 26 January – 01 February 2025

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Parakramabahu VI may have been the last Sinhala ruler to play a major role in the oceanic trade. In 1418, he had the capital and the Buddha’s tooth relic shifted to Kotte. After Parakramabahu, people in the country were virtually excluded from controlling their wider trade (which was reinforced during colonial rule). This led to anthropological prognoses proclaiming ‘local apathy & lack of interest in commercial activity’… We should ask, though: commerce for what?

     This ee continues our attempt to depict Sri Lanka’s ancient historical links with China, in the wake of the President’s recent trip to China. The English media overflows with warnings to the ruling party (can they really rule?) not to deviate from our role as designated pet English poodle in the puddle called the Indian Ocean. And in deed our historical account from the 10^th-15^th century – with the spread of the spice trade, midst the rise of Mongolia in northeast Asia, Srivijaya in the southeast, and the Chola, Islamic and East African empires – highlight an age prior to Europe’s forever invasions. China’s Song Dynasty recorded many South Asian merchants coming to reside in southern Chinese ports, and our period records the Ming Dynasty’s Zheng He, whose flotillas of 100s of ships, with almost 40,000 people aboard, crossed back and forth from East Asia to Africa, 7 times across an ocean beginning to bubble.

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A Dano-Norwegian kingdom, 15 years after claiming sovereignty over Greenland, made a grab for Trincomalee in 1620, after which they were expelled to Tharangambadi (Tranquebar) in Tamilnadu. They paid an annual tribute to the Rajah of Tanjore until they sold the colony to the English East India Company in 1845, or so they say.

     The continuing project to strike up another Concert of Europe with the USA as orchestral conductor or commercial sponsor or big noise, also recalls the unfinished business of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which denies all claims of other usurping Europeans, and proclaims all of the Americas as belonging the USA, which is made up of usurping Europeans – United Settlers Ltd. One problem, not just a cartographical imprecision, is where the Americas begin and where they end. Just like NATO’s Atlantic and now the Indo-Pacific. They just a-flowing, or keep on rollin’… As much as nature abhors a vacuum, water too declines to draw a line.  It is now time for the Danish to trim their sails again.

     In 1898, when the US invaded the Spanish colonies in Asia and the Americas, an Anti-Imperialist League arose in the US, comprising such luminaries as the steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie and novelists Mark Twain and Henry James. Lenin suggested the US controversy was between older robbers who worried they had robbed too much versus younger robbers who wanted a greater share of the loot. Earlier, the so-called Confederacy of enslavers wanted to extend their borders beyond Texas, south of south. They ended up settling for a Confederation in Canada, north of north. And now, after claiming the icecaps are melting, they want a sliver of them icecubes, at any cost, beyond any compass… They keep selling what they do not own and buying it too… or else….. Their god has sent us Don Trump as US President to clear any remaining mists, dust away any cobwebs, any lingering delusions about what we think the leading white settler state thinks about us and the world. Their god has also sent us Marc Rubio, who Trump once called ‘a perfect little puppet’ and but has now named him as his US Secretary of State (see below…)

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Unilever was the ‘Gold Sponsor’ of last week’s Sri Lanka Economic Summit (SLES), which ended with a ‘Plan for Economic Transformation’. The other SLES Gold Sponsor was Deloitte. Deloitte is one of the Big 4 Accounting Multinationals (along with EY, KPMG, PwC). Chartered accountants and auditors long for their touch. They cook the books for raw capital. And for some Sri Lankans – born into a factory that churns out accountants and other clerks – such tax magicians are a goldmine for salaried serfdom. Deloitte was made a ‘transaction advisor’ for selling off national enterprises. England’s Unilever, one of the world largest conduits for FMCGs (fast-moving consumer goods) is the historic symbol par excellence of the colonial plantation economy, So, it is no surprise that multinational plantation owner Unilever, and tax magician and book-cooker Deloitte provided the ‘gold’. Of course, above them stands tall the SLES ‘Platinum Sponsor’: Standard Chartered Bank. Who exactly is Standard Chartered? And what exactly is their plan for transformation?

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‘Step up’ – President tells private sector –

‘You are the engine of growth for the economy’

Step Up! This was the President’s exhortation to the Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Summit. The problem is: the ‘private sector’ may not even care to know what an engine is? Neither do our engineers, They perhaps think an engine is not something you make but what you import along with or without a chassis and a frame, and then just turn on with a key and drive off a ship into a sales parking lot, along the Negombo-Colombo or some other trunk road. In fact, the ‘private sector’, dominated by ‘market minorities’ long mollycoddled by imperialism, are not an engine of growth but a clumsy contraption for underdevelopment, who unfortunately, monopolize all the country’s resources, and ensure any surpluses are frittered away on trinkets rather than invested in industry and skilling workers.

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Who decides the official flavor of the hour? Of the day or the week, or the season? We can only guess. Rice & coconuts & small-c corruption. Who makes importing cars a national priority? The gold or platinum sponsors? This is the role of the political powers that be. Almost ironically coterminous with an Economic Summit proclaiming ‘transformation’, was an HNB Leasing Forum: ‘SL Motor Industry: Outlook for 2025’. Hatton National Bank (HNB) has been seen as a repository of the ointments of Harry Jayawardena’s distilleries, and for the Sunday tithes and daily investments of the Catholic Church, which this week thanked the President for revoking approval for Gautam Adani’s wind-power plants in Mannar & Pooneryn, on environmental grounds. The Church, whose officials wear long thick vestments, demands ‘maximal transparency’ in such projects. We wonder in what unpolluted realms, the church does usuriously multiply their tithes? Meanwhile, the car import forum’s keynote speech by Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Chairman & Economic Policy Advisor to the President Duminda Hulangamuwa noted:

‘The Government needs to collect Rs300-350billion,

which is around 1% of GDP[,?] from vehicle imports,

to bridge the budgetary deficit between revenue & expenses.

Our biggest source of income is expected from vehicles…’

But what does this mean about our ‘sources of income’. It’s not a matter of knowing English. This quote is from the Financial Times: ‘Experts weigh on vehicle import resumption and outlook’ (see ee Who’s Who?). It is at such moments of indelible perplexity, ee is driven to wondering if we should have an SWRD English-Only Section, with gems such as this:

‘Discipline as well as orderliness in the workplace

was one of the bi-products of the system of English

medium education that Sri Lanka had’

– Anton Peiris, The Rot Started with

SWRD’s ‘Sinhala Only’ Policy

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‘Private sector in unison call for

resolution of congestion crisis in port’

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This week saw the shipping mafia, epitome of the colonial import-export plantation fraud, write a collective letter representing 29 ‘organizations’ (‘fronts’ – the real peramuna – perhaps), including food and sugar importers – beginning with the ‘Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and USA’s Chamber of Commerce in SL (AMCHAM) and ending with the Women’s Chamber of Industry & Commerce (WCIC)’ – lay down their ultimata to deal with ‘congestion’ at the port.  Of course they would not call for the USA to halt their escalation of wars in West, Southeast and East Asia, which are adding to the congestion. And then we have India, daily transgressing oceanic limits, to catch fish, small and big, demanding we declare certain countries beyond the boundary…

     Indeed, the President was getting closer to the truth when he told (hinted to?) the Summit, what they and the President too, perhaps know too well, that this import-export fraud is run by entrenched monopolies:

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‘Around 90% of Sri Lanka’s export revenue is generated

by just a few organizations. Similarly, 69% of customs revenue

comes from only 621 files. Furthermore, while Western Province

contributes 37% to the national economy, Uva Province contributes

only 5%. Concentrating the economy in the hands of small groups

will not allow for sustainable economic expansion.’

– President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (see ee Economy

Budget to allocate Rs1.35trillion)

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These monopolies are/were linked to the English slave plantation system, as the 1970-77 government came to realize when they had to contend with – when confronted with the need for land reform after – the first JVP insurrection in 1971, as the then-Secretary to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, recalls:

‘The nationalization of the plantations was due to the

desire of government to bring under greater national

control important national assets; and break what they

saw as the stranglehold of English dominance, operated

through an agency house system based on English traditions

& English practice, serving substantial English interests.

This was antithetical to the Republican environment now

prevailing, and was in line with the theory & practice

fashionable at the time of having ‘the commanding heights’

of the economy under national & state control.’

– MDD Pieris (see ee Agriculture, Land & Housing Reforms)

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Monopoly is, however, something even the wealthiest personalities, elected or selected, are not eager to confront:

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SBD de Silva was responsible for writing articles on industry

– for the Central Bank journal – a regular survey. Yet Gamani Corea,

as Director of Economic Research at the Central Bank, once told him

to rewrite his column and leave out the fact that the development of

industry was inhibited by the dominance of import monopolies.

De Silva who gives as good as he gets, nonetheless, left this crucial

factoid in. Yet, when Corea later made it to Geneva and got a little

more hip, he told SBD that his articles were ‘quite good’.

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So who exactly are these monopolies in Sri Lanka: from whence do they derive?

     England’s Standard Chartered Bank, ‘platinum sponsor’ of the Sri Lanka Economic Summit (SLES), has its origins in the Peninsular & Orient Steam Navigation Company (P&O). P&O’s origins are in an English government contract to carry mail from London to Asia, setting up a monopoly over the Bombay-China opium trade from the 1850s.

     In 1851: the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China was set up to finance the blossoming opium trade, as well as stealing coffee through Sri Lanka, cotton through Mumbai (Bombay), indigo and tea through Kolkata (Calcutta), rice through Yangon (Rangoon), sugar through Java, tobacco through Sumatra, hemp through Manila, and silk through Yokohama. In 1927, this Chartered Bank took over the P&O Bank. In 1969: This Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China merged with the gold-mining Standard Bank of British South Africa to become the Standard Chartered Bank: ‘to earn handsome profits… from financing the movement of goods from Europe to the East and to Africa.’  No need to guess what the ‘goods’ were and who made them and how. Standard Chartered was of course closely linked to the opium-trading Jardine-Matheson and the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank (HSBC). HSBC was linked to China’s Imperial Maritime Customs’ second Inspector General Robert Hart, who set up a more modern customs and postal service, controlling China’s sovereignty. The customs deposited all its income and custom revenue in HSBC… There’s another tale about the link between opium-dealing Jardine-Matheson, still the largest landlord and employer in Hong Kong, and their old Indian compradors, the Tatas, with the ‘pre-used’ car trade from Japan to Sri Lanka… but let’s leave this to another ee…

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[Illegal Cuban-American settler] ‘Marco Rubio appeared before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on January 15, 2025, and called China ‘the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever faced’ and said the Chinese Communist Party had ‘lied, cheated, hacked, and stolen their way to global superpower status at our expense’. US President Trump formally nominated Rubio, among others, on Jan 20, as one of his first acts as president. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations unanimously approved his nomination and the Senate confirmed him a few hours later by a vote of 99 to 0. On Jan 21, Vice President JD Vance swore Rubio into office as the 72^nd secretary of state. Rubio is the first Hispanic to hold the office. On his first day as secretary, Rubio met with foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue member countries to ‘strengthen economic opportunity and peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region’. In accordance with President Trump’s executive order, on Jan 24, 2025, Rubio halted all US foreign aid for 90 days, with some exceptions, effective Jan 28. In his first trip abroad as secretary of state, Rubio will travel to Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. The trip is intended to address curtailing illegal migration and Trump’s push to reclaim the Panama Canal. In January 2025, Rubio stated that it was in ‘our national interest’ to acquire Greenland, and he did not rule out military coercion to acquire Greenland. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Rubio

     The USA and Europe’s current raging against China’s industrialization recalls earlier manic episodes which led to world war aka mass slaughter. As exports fell and unemployment swelled, England in 1885 set up a Royal Commission to analyze the causes for the ‘depression of trade and industry.’ England’s Foreign Office sent a questionnaire out to diplomatic and consular officers in England’s main markets, to report on barriers to English trade, including competitors. 35 chambers of commerce and commercial associations told the Royal Commission that competition from German, French, Belgian, US and other national industries were ‘fast penetrating’ into markets which England had monopolized for most of the 19^th century, taking control of the seas while declaring ‘free trade’. But industrialism was now expanding into Central and Eastern Europe, and south of the Alps. They were fast shaking off their dependence on English capital goods and finished manufactures, threatening England’s exports of plant materials, machinery, rails, locomotives, and other capital goods, constructing their own factories and railroads. England was about to ditch free trade…again…

     This ee looks at EE Williams’ screed Made in Germany, which was a hit in England’s summer of 1896. Thus, we’re told. It was another signal for England and the USA to prepare for ‘world war’. Further English and US scaremongering about the dangers of the rise of German industry was published in the US as a book purportedly penned by a ‘German engineer’, S Herzog, in 1915 at the very beginning of World War I, calling for a German Industrial Army, with strict instructions on the prevention of the export of certain machinery and skilled workers. The book was introduced with a warning by (later US President) Herbert Hoover! Yet another 1919 book, Germany’s New War Against America, by a New York Tribune scribe, gave even wider replay to Herzog’s book, this time prefaced with a warning about Germany’s plan for the next world war, by US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer: ‘With her factories and workshops intact and mobilized with her finance and commerce, Germany is prepared to attack the USA in a commercial war!’ Palmer is more famed for his anti-Red ‘Palmer Raids’ in 1919, after the revolution in the USSR, to arrest and deport alleged anarchists and communists, with endless lists prepared by his indefatigable clerk (later FBI Director) Edgar Hoover.

      What is interesting about Palmer’s menacing is his reference to Germany’s dye industry: Germany turned ‘her dye factories from their peacetime occupation, into the making of high explosives and noxious gases… She is looking to the dye industry as her chief weapon on the economic battlefields of this country.’ A dye industry is important not just to other industries, but also for national defense and research for curative medicines. He then describes how he ‘organized and purchased 4,500 German-owned dye and pharmaceutical patents’… Hear the clocks strike the same times twice and more. Tiktok indeed!

     The additional interest for us is that around the time of these covert industrial wars, Ananda Coomaraswamy had his An Open Letter to the Kandyan Chiefs published in Ceylon Observer on 17 February 1905, ‘begging Kandyan Chiefs to preserve the architectural heritage of Viharas, Devalas, Walawwas and Ambalamas’. It was republished as a booklet in 1957 and again in 1983. Coomaraswamy also laments the loss of the local making of dyes and paints, and its replacement by Europe’s chemicals. He made no mention of its link to a larger war around industrialization & deindustrialization… The Ceylon Observer, then as now, deaf to the resounding notes of the ages, appears to be singularly disinterested in such transformative hues. Neither are these so-called modern artists….

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Contents:

When Rulers are Overruled by Importers