We must make full use of that opportunity. The police violence in Seattle against those who sought only to exercise their right of nonviolent political expression exposed the visible face of a more subtle tyranny that uses money as its instrument of political and social control. Tonight I will focus on one example, the use of the debt mechanism, in the name of development, to subordinate Southern countries to the interests of a small Northern elite. I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement between nations. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and above all, let finance be primarily national.
Authentic development based on such principles offers little opportunity for colonial extraction.
Whether from intent or from ignorance, the North mobilized after World War II through the Bretton Woods institutions to assure that authentic self-reliant development would gain no foothold in the newly liberated colonies. It was all so simple. The World Bank trained cadres of young economists, teaching them to believe that rapid development depends on foreign borrowing to supplement investment based on domestic savings. You are also building up foreign debts that can only be repaid by exporting ever more of your domestic resources and production. In truth the World Bank has functioned first of all as an export financing facility for Northern corporations.