Greece and Ukraine represent the development of a new, more direct management of wealth extraction.
A new form of colonialism is emerging in Europe. Not colonialism imposed by military conquest and occupation, as in the 19th century. Not even the more efficient form of economic colonialism pioneered by the U.S. in the post-1945 period, where the costs of direct administration and military occupation were replaced with compliant local elites allowed to share in the wealth extracted in exchange for being allowed to rule on behalf of the colonizers.
In the 21st century, it is “colonialism by means of financial asset transfer.” It is colony wealth extraction by colonizing country managers, assigned to directly administer the processes in the colony by which financial assets are to be transferred. This new form of colonialism by direct management plus financial wealth transfer is now emerging in Greece and Ukraine.
Behind the appearance of the recent Greek debt deal is the reality of European bankers and their institutions — the European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF, and European Stability Mechanism (ESM) — who will soon assume direct management of the operation of the economy, according to the Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, signed August 14, 2015, by Greece and the Troika. The MoU spells out direct management in various ways. In the case of Ukraine, it is even more direct. U.S. and European shadow bankers were installed by U.S.-Europe last December 2014 as Ukraine’s finance and economic ministers. They have been directly managing Ukraine’s economy on a day-to-day basis ever since.
The new colonialism as financial asset transfer takes several practical forms: as wealth transfer in the form of interest payments on ever rising debt, in firesales of government assets sold directly to the colonizer’s investors and bankers, and in the de facto takeover the colony’s banking system and bank assets in order to transfer wealth to shareholders of the colonizing country’s private bankers and investors.