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To: DFG

Extorting money from the west.

Like father, like son.


4 posted on 05/19/2022 8:53:43 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: skeeter

Old man Marcos wasnt extorting money from the “west”. US aid was a pretty minor part of his corruption.

The really big deal was foreign loans, from banks around the world (US, Japanese, British, etc) vastly more important than anything from the US government. Marcos permitted his cronies to borrow from abroad, with the Philippine government guaranteeing the loans, and with the encouragement of the World Bank. Of course Marcos got a cut from the cronies, of course their ventures failed, of course these guys skimmed their own cut, and of course the Philippine government, even the post-Marcos government, was left holding the bag.

The last couple of years (1980-83) the country’s finances were in a desperate state, they were borrowing money to pay off interest on monies previously borrowed. There was also a lack of credit available (as they had borrowed so much already) leading to a foreign exchange crisis just when the second oil price shock hit.

The other big deal was purely domestic, as Marcos set up a system to skim export earnings of a couple of critical industries, coconuts and sugar.

Between these things, foreign loans and the export skim, they account for nearly all the corruption and economic damage he perpetrated. Anything else was in comparison trivial.


8 posted on 05/19/2022 9:14:26 AM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
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