e-Con e-News

blog: https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com

Before you study the economics, study the economists!”

e-Con e-News 15-21 February 2026

The capitalist media keeps saying that the Jeffrey Epstein exposé is the ‘worst sex abuse scandal in US history’. Really? Strange then, how very few corporate ‘executives’ in the US seem to have been indicted for these crimes. But, but… ‘the worst’?  The USA (& their European sponsors) has been waging genocidal wars from their very birth, involving all manner of abuse & mutilation & desecration of bodies, alive & dead. Scalping was an English invention for acounting purposes. And several US states were involved in the business of slave breeding (to supply the southern US plantations), which involved the systematic organization of rape, of women & children. The US government’s own disclosures at the recent Munich Conference in Europe make it plain that they aim to keep waging war on our countries (see ee Quotes, Rubio). They insist they have nothing to be ashamed of – which is why they’re better called the United States of Amnesia. So what exactly is the media diverting from?

     The headlined arrest (& immediate release) of an Englishman named Andrew (formerly known as their Prince) diverts from the depredations of his older brother Charles (now known as their King, parading as a heterosexual in a ‘marriage blanc’, i.e., in holy matrimony for show), whose relatives & ‘peers’ (‘Lord’ Louis Mountbatten, etc) were well known for their outré sexual proclivities in ‘their’ colonies & other resorts around the world. Less publicized are the actions of Epstein’s financier Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, a top brand, related to a ‘leading’ rag trader in Sri Lanka, the Brandix Group.

     The English Queen Victoria’s real ‘secret’ were the lengths that history books have gone, to hide the immense famines her majesty’s government policies engendered around the world to institutionalize the great divergence (between ‘east’ and ‘west’, or ‘north’ and ‘south’ or whatever euphemisms one uses to contrast oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited). There is more written about her Belgian first cousin ‘King’ Leopold’s depredations in the Congo, but more important is Leopold’s sponsor, the plantation owner William Lever, who originated what is now the multinational, Unilever).

     The media in Sri Lanka seems to have rather too quickly shrugged off further investigation into the Epstein-Wexner link involving our merchants, especially since these are employers of large numbers of young women & men (see ee Random Notes). The media claim instead there is little in the infamous Epstein’s files relating to the predilections of this country’s ‘private’ sector. Perhaps they have been too busy facilitating (lubricating?) our links to the ‘leading’ importers & exporters of this world, who are afforded a type of princely teflon treatment in the media. Organized crime is apparently just the province of rube villagers, whose village names are prefixed onto their gang monikers.

     The arrival in Sri Lanka this week of England’s Secretary of State for Justice David Lammy, amidst all the hyper judicial frippery in England, any questions about those matters, were diplomatically avoided by our local ‘free media’. He was, we are told, here to ‘reinforce investor confidence’. This ‘Afro-Saxon’ of Guyanese origin, has supposedly been a veritable ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ in pursuing accusations of ‘war crimes’ against Sri Lanka’s armed forces personnel, rather than England’s own international war crimes recent & historic (see ee Quotes). This same gentleman recently cut off journalists’ digital access to English court records. ‘English media are kept ignorant of most trials, and only certain trials are publicized’ (see last week’s ee). So now we know only certain criminals get chosen to be perp-walked before flashing cameras – for English justice is a staged script of a different literary genre.

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The head of the USA’s International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, also arrived in Sri Lanka from 16^–18^th February. Then the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet Steve Koehler arrived from the 19^th-21^st. It was then announced, ‘A Sri Lankan-made food & travel series will premiere [on Feb 20^th] across South Asia on National Geographic – a platform synonymous with global storytelling.’Platform? They’ve long been much more than a magazine – linked to US Naval Intelligence, using ‘exotic’ stories, ‘nature’, ‘anthropology’, etc., as a cover (‘Have camera, will travel! Bang! Bang!’). All these characters, from IMF to Navy, are now to be followed by the USA’s Chamber of Commerce (AmCham Sri Lanka) hosting ‘its flagship CEO Forum 2026’. ‘Accelerating Sri Lanka’s Rebuild’ on 25 February (see ee Who’s Who), which will ‘bring together over 250 C-level executives, policymakers, development partners, & global thought leaders’. Whoa! Rebuild, indeed (like Gaza!). And so begins a season ushering in our own April new year, preceded by Ramadan and Lent and the start of the Chinese zodiac’s New Year of the Horse.

     So, is this all ‘strategic sequencing’? We may be forgiven for likening this trail of visitors to another episode in the US foreign policy version of their World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), where one hulking grappler follows another into a blood and tomato-sauce-encrusted ring to battle another grappler – tag wrestling, which usually ends in a free-for-all. IMF Georgieva’s visit was set to coincide with ‘the 75^th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s IMF membership & the 75^th anniversary of Central Bank of Sri Lanka’. Well, how auspicious is this! Does she do this with every country? That’s a huge travel bill!

     The IMF head’s arrival was heralded with the usual blizzard of adulatory (more accurately: ‘obsequious’ aka ‘ass-kissing’) news items. She is quoted uttering various jargons & indices, arranging photo-ops with hostage children whose names are not given. Her meeting with the country’s President was described as a ‘rare high-level engagement’. The news headlines began with her hailing their IMF program as a ‘success story’ (talk about MPHOT – Monkey Praising Her Own Tail?), and as she exited, the stories were back to the old whining about Sri Lanka’s need to sell more national assets (privatization!) & weaken labour laws (‘flexibility’!), more ‘discipline’, etc. 

     Amidst the swishing of her invisible fiscal whip (try not to picture: the Central Bank governor happily bending over, with his pants down?), the US Pacific Commander then arrived, bedecked in white uniform, shirt pocket bespeckled with colored ribbons (we imagine as souvenirs for bombing fishing boats! Oh wait, there was a story this week about another ‘drug-trafficking boat’ with 11 un-named ‘male narco-terrorists’ being bombed both in the Caribbean & ‘Eastern Pacific’, wherever that is). The news blizzard accompanying Georgieva was reduced to a flurry with the Navy Commander’s clipped verbiage. He chirped about‘shared values’ and then it was quickly back to those euphemisms (Ahem! Ahem!) about ‘transnational threats’ & ‘defence’. Having changed the title of its military department from the Department of Defense to Department of War, it follows that whenever the US speaks of ‘defense’, they mean war! And we must assume by ‘transnational’ he doesn’t mean the dangers posed by transnational or multinational corporations (MNCs) like Rockefeller’s Exxon or Citibank… or Unilever!

     This US Navy Commander apparently even ‘commanded’ news items – the Wijeya Group’s Daily Mirror just reproduced the US embassy’s press release as a DM news story: ‘The US Pacific Fleet – the largest naval fleet command in the world – operates across half the globe, protecting vital sea lanes and connecting partners throughout the Indo-Pacific.’ OK! Then this item (minus quote marks) parading as ‘news’, referred to ‘our confidence’… ‘our partners’ and claimed his ‘second visit… underscores our shared long-term commitment to a free, open, and prosperous Indo-Pacific’. ‘Our’ may refer to the Daily Mirror & the US government. Really! Does the local media charge ad rates for such reprints? They’d be really rich if they did. Well, they probably do, but it is undeclared.

     In the background, in other BBC news item parading as ‘international news’, we heard the head of Koehler’s government, President Don Trump, cursing the English government for ‘leasing’ from Mauritius, the island Diego Garcia, on which the US has a military base. There is no mention that England just leased Diego Garcia again to the USA for 100 years. England claims the ‘lease’ from Mauritius is for ‘legal’ reasons. Is this what ‘free & open’ means? Behind all this ‘free & open’ chatter, is the gathering yet again of another killer US fleet to bomb Iran, including from Diego Garcia. Midst all this we assume the next US envoy to Sri Lanka, Eric Meyer, much heralded but not arrived yet, will show up at Kollupitiya Junction in a puff of smoke, with archangels or B52s adding to the divine spectacle of gloom, doom and boom (for more, see ee Sovereignty).

     There is much evidence to suggest that a more horrific spectacle will be staged to divert us from their ‘always dying yet still not dead’ capitalism. It is long past its ‘expiry date’. The Indian Coast Guard has also joined in their game, and deployed ‘55 ships & 10-12 aircraft for round-the-clock surveillance in its maritime zones’ (which apparently includes us), and seized ‘Iran-linked US-sanctioned tankers’. While there are many headlines to praise India’s largess towards our country, none of these Indian coast guard vessels seem to be able to apprehend the piratical Indian fishing & other fleets that keep robbing Sri Lanka of its marine resources.

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‘More than one million households have

 been pushed off the electrical grid.’

• Not everyone is amused: ‘A bitter irony’ is how the Yukthi Collective greeted the IMF head’s visit, while calling for ‘debt suspension’ instead of mere tinkering (see ee Focus). Georgieva has apparently promised to build ‘a more resilient future’. The IMF’s 61 years in Sri Lanka have, instead, says Yukthi, ‘eroded resilience, dismantled state capacity, and locked the country into a debt-dependent future’. Yukthi catalogues a litany of further deadly measures, the IMF is demanding to be enacted. Yukthi says the IMF policies ‘ensure the next crisis is already in motion’. The IMF has directed investment away from health & education, for which Sri Lanka has so far been famous for. Instead, the IMF has prioritized paying off Wall Street! While the IMF & World Bank cry about the cyclone, the government is only allowed to dedicate a fraction of its budget to relief. And so-called green bonds & blue bonds turn out to be mere financial chicanery.

     Yukthi calls for the ‘auditing for illegitimate debt, curbing illicit financial flows, and closing tax loopholes for the corporate sector’. They say the ‘best sympathy’ Kristalina Georgieva can give the people of Sri Lanka is for the IMF to take its hands off our future. By the way, the Yukthi polemic was carried in the Financial Times, but somehow did not feature in their online columns section. Ahem!

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‘If you look at Sri Lanka’s debt crisis…

it is not because of China or India or Japan.

The main culprits are the [ISB] bond markets…’

‘There is a lot of financing for green energy. But

Often… a lot of that is ‘green washing’…’

(see ee Focus)

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Also in this ee Focus, the economist Ahilan Kadirgamar insists in The Daily Mirror, that we ‘Don’t Count on the IMF or World Bank’. Kadirgamar details how the global order (imperialism?) has undermined our state institutions, turning them into puppets of the private sector. Isn’t this the very epitome of ‘corruption’? He details the various ‘crises’ – 1997, 2008, etc. – caused by the ‘global system of free trade, & the free flow of finance’. ‘Half of the countries in the developing [sic!] world, are facing some kind of debt problem.’ With all these ’restructurings’, the Sri Lankan economy will in 2034 go back to the lower poverty levels of 2017-18! Instead of rebuilding the historic irrigation system, or the public transportation system (The media, beholden to the private car import mafia, is also not decrying the shocking fact that the Colombo-Kandy railway, a commuter & tourism lifeline, may not be repaired til year end!  Instead, the government is importing luxuries, including more cars! He also points to how the burden of rectifying so-called climate change has been cast onto our shoulders. Our debts are mostly paying off bonds to Wall Street, and our ‘total interest payment is almost equal to the principal!’

     Liberals want Sri Lanka’s unjustly calculated debt to take capricious ‘climate change’ into account. The merchants & moneylenders wish to game the climate into the equation with their fake green & blue bonds. But what about global warring & global whitening? Their arbitrary wars & sanctions have made an import-export dependent economy subject to the whims of imperialism. Should these events too be calculated into the mix, of who really owes who?

     One other matter: Kadirgamar implies that the first international sovereign bond (ISB) was taken during Mahinda Rajapakse’s reign. This is true, but most ISBs were post-2017, during the reign of the US-funded Yahapalana regime. He uses this to argue that the second wave of liberalization happened under Mahinda. No, after JR in 1977, the second wave began in 1994 under President CB Kumaratunga. Among the liberal economists it is widely recognized that the ‘liberalization’ process actually stalled under MR! Perhaps it is this, more than the ending of the war, that incurred the wrath of the merchant media against the Rajapakses,

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• After decades of over-the-top threats and rhetoric to impose ‘free trade’ on our countries, the hysteric protectionist policies pursued by the imperialist powers today, resemble those of the 1930s during ‘depression’, especially with regard to ‘raw materials’. Witness the recent ‘Buy European Only’ policy (see ee Quotes). Back then too, between their world wars, they began to systematically cut off supplies, even to each other. This was evident in the battles between England, which controlled production of raw rubber, and US manufacturers using rubber.

     Such matters are discussed in ee’s conclusion of Chapter 7 of SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. Focusing on ‘Plantations & their Metropolitan Orientation’, de Silva also discusses the impact of technological improvements such as the substitution of inorganic materials, reducing the need for organic goods supplied by plantation economies. This matter of substitution by multinational corporations should concern us greatly as they are now removing their fingerprints from directly administering plantations (in terms of labor & environmental impact & responsibility, in particular) and microfinance, etc.

     The other important insight in this SBD de Silva excerpt is: There are 2 kinds of technological improvements: those that ‘raise the yield per hectare without a basic change in capital-labour ratios or in the organic composition of capital … The 2nd type of improvement is the substitution of capital for labour, with a concomitant rise in labour productivity and a decline in the unit cost of output… Such technology is characteristic of production in the developed economies, both in manufacturing industry & in agriculture, and it differs qualitatively from that adopted by the plantations’ (see ee Focus).

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• The Wijeya Group’s Financial Times (FT) published a column, ‘Environmental Impact Quotient of Pesticides: Catalyst for sustainable agricultural futures’, on 20 February, by Professor Buddhi Marambe, who FT describes as ‘attached to the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya’. However, Marambe is also a director of the English multinational ICI, known as CIC in Sri Lanka, which has more than anyone drenched this country in dangerous chemistries. Should not this crucial information on his ‘private’ affiliations be included in his attached biography with the article? Only listed as Professor, working in a state-funded university, may suggest he is speaking on behalf of the public good. Let it be recalled, Marambe, on behalf of chemical importers like ICI-CIC, also led the assault on & the sabotage of the attempts by the Gotabaya Rajapakse government to introduce ‘organic’ fertilizer, half-baked & ill-conceived a policy though it may have been. Next time a beloved, relative or friend falls ill, gets a malignant cancer, it may behoove the media owners to reflect on such subterfuge practised by those who sometimes claim to be guardians of the public right to know. Jayavayvaa!

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Contents:

IMF Head Visits to Inspect the Damage It’s Doing to Sri Lanka; US Pacific Commander Visits Too – What Outrages Await Us?