Well folks, it finally happened... I've managed to get serious enough to actually post a rather important (though still opinionated) entry after quite a lot of introspective and altogether too plainly quaint posts.

Imagine that you own a house, nothing too fancy but great property value, location, a pool... you get the idea. Unfortunately due to job loss, or some other tragedy you find yourself heavily in debt and the house falling into disrepair, the roof is leaking, plumbing needs an overhaul, the hot water heater only works half the time and you can now jump down from the second floor into the kitchen via a nice human sized hole.
Things are looking pretty desperate, when a very friendly and well dressed bank representative come up to you and says, "Well friend, it looks like you're in a bit of a pickle... tell you what, I'm willing to loan a rather hefty sum of money since our bank is there to help those in need, there are a few conditions but we'll worry about that later."
Of course being in a bad situation you willingly accept - who wouldn't, it seems like a helping hand out of trouble.
The money is quickly handed over to you, and on top is a list of conditions on how you can spend it.

And at the very beginning of the list it stipulates you cannot spend any money on the repair or maintenance of your house - though you can sell parts off to other people, who may or may not repair it themselves. As well you cannot spend the money on education or training to get a better job, you must also spend money only at certain approved stores even if they are more expensive.
The list goes on, and it quickly dawns on you that following this list of conditions will not only prevent you from recovering from debt, but forces you into a worse situation by spending resources on more material goods instead of building value into the one asset you have... your house, which will end up as someone else's property by the end of it.

Now this sounds pretty horrible right? If any bank were to do that to an individual it would be downright criminal. So then how can organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund get away with doing the exact same thing to developing countries?

If you've ever wondered why there were so many protesters around the G8 and other such organizations ... well it's mostly because of the weed the kids be a smoken' but a few of them understand that these organizations do not have a mandate of helping other countries. Even under the guise of 'aid' developing countries are blackmailed into selling off the rights and control of their own resources for money that will in the end do little or no good.

An example is during one of the previous G8, a resolution to absolve the debt of struggling countries was put into place. Of course it sounds amazing... I'm sure Bono must have been pretty proud of himself as well, unfortunately the attached strings to these debt cancellations are not meant to help anyone but big business (I hate generalizing like this but hopefully can edit this later). Some of the conditions include forcing countries to increase the expenditure on importing goods from G8 countries, privatization of their natural resources and companies such as water and power, shutting down various 'dead weight' government run agencies (hospitals, schools etc.) in the name of cost cutting and effectiveness - just to name a few.

The really sickening thing is that these organizations actually portray themselves as humanitarian while underhandedly stealing the future out of the hand of the people they are supposedly helping. So what should be done? Stay tuned for the next post, have a couple of ideas and one that isn't going to be too popular.