You may wonder why this article, taking place in far off Africa, has relevance for your life. In this globalized capitalist world we are now living in, financial scam artists are using mostly the same methods everywhere to put all working people in debt to the owning class. This will probably end up, if we don't stop them, with the whole world looking like a modern version of feudalism, or neofeudalism.
Our country (USA) was founded by this class of people who, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, perpetrated one of the cleverest schemes to enrich the new ruling class that had taken over the US after the Revolutionary War. To get working people to fight that war, they encouraged authentic patriots like Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry to frame the issues as involving the inherent or natural rights of people. This was reflected in the inspirational wording of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.But after the war was over, the people soon found out that it was a war to establish the independence of the American capitalists from all the restrictions placed upon them by English rulers. Paine then was totally ignored, and ended his life penniless and obscurity. As Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:
One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.After the war the Constitution was rammed through a convention that had been billed as a meeting where modifications to the Articles of Confederation were to be discussed. As Charles Beard, the noted historian and political scientist of the early 20th century wrote in his seminal work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution:
Instead of being a document drawn up by patriotic men for the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the Constitution was the work of consolidated economic groups--...property interests....Having laid the ground rules to insure the priority of property rights which would be enforced by the new national army, they ran their scam that I will briefly describe. (See the above book for more details and also Beard's book entitled, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy.)
During the war the soldiers, farmers and working people (as usual) led by members of the local elites, fought the war against the British. It was a grueling war: many defeats were suffered at the hands of the British, long imprisonments in terrible conditions, and soldiers endured long delays in receiving their pay which also caused hardships for their families. Then when they were paid, they were usually paid in paper script (formally debt) issued either by their respective States or the Confederation government. This money depreciated dramatically over time to where it was worth less than 20% of its nominal value and as low as 5%. After the war was over, Hamilton and his capitalist friends quietly went about buying up all this script at their market value. Then after the Constitution was rammed through, they made sure that the new government assumed all of the debts for this old money and other war debts at their face value!
Anyway--excuse my digression--as the author of the article explains, these vulture funds will likely be operating in the US as well:
Please note that these attacks are not confined to Africa. For example, Argentina is now prey to two vulture funds, Elliott Capital and EM Limited, who are trying to seize the funds deposited by the Argentine government with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)- an amount exceeding $ 1 billion. Nothing hinders (for the time being) the vulture funds from attacking the North next, given the speculative practices on their debts. In this context, further measures are needed to take the vulture funds out of harm’s way.All this illustrates is that the use of debt is a primary weapon in the arsenal of capitalists to accumulate wealth and power at the expense of those who create wealth and fight the wars of capitalists.