Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Like a good (sic) capitalist, Trump wants to free the US plc from any restraints on making profits. For Trump, the corporation and its shareholders, the sole objective is profits, not the needs of society in general, nor higher wages for the employees of Trump’s corporation. That means no more wasteful expenditure on mitigating global warming and avoiding damage to the environment. The US corporation should just make more profits and not be concerned with such ‘externalities’.

Like the real estate agent he is, Trump thinks the way to boost his corporation’s profits is make deals to take over other corporations or to make agreements on prices and costs to ensure maximum profits for his corporation. Like any big corporation, Trump does not want any competitors to gain market share Share A unit of ownership interest in a corporation or financial asset, representing one part of the total capital stock. Its owner (a shareholder) is entitled to receive an equal distribution of any profits distributed (a dividend) and to attend shareholder meetings. at his expense. So he wants to increase costs for rival national corporations, like Europe, Canada and China. He is doing this by raising tariffs on their exports. He is also trying to get other less powerful corporations to agree terms on taking more of US corporations’ goods and services (health companies, GMO Genetically Modified Organisms
GMO Living organisms (plant or animal) which have undergone genetic manipulation in order to modify their characteristics, usually to make them resistant to a herbicide or pesticide. In 2000, GMOs were planted over more than 40 million hectares, three quarters of that being soybeans and maize. The main countries involved in this production are the USA, Argentina and Canada. Genetically modified plants are usually produced intensively for cattle fodder for the rich countries. Their existence raises three problems.


– The health problem. Apart from the presence of new genes whose effects are not always known, resistance to a herbicide implies that the producer will be increasing use of the herbicide. GMO products (especially American soybeans) end up gorged with herbicide whose effects on human health are unknown. Furthermore, to incorporate a new gene, it is associated with an antibiotic-resistant gene. Healthy cells are heavily exposed to the herbicide and the whole is cultivated in a solution with this antibiotic so that only the modified cells are conserved.


– The legal problem. GMOs are only being developed on the initiative of big agro-business transnationals like Monsanto, who are after the royalties on related patents. They thrust aggressively forward, forcing their way through legislation that is inadequate to deal with these new issues. Farmers then become dependent on these firms. States protect themselves as best they can, but often go along with the firms, and are completely at a loss when seed thought not to have been tampered with is found to contain GMOs. Thus, genetically modified rape seed was destroyed in the north of France in May 2000 (Advanta Seeds). Genetically modified maize on 2600 ha in the southern French department of Lot et Garonne was not destroyed in June 2000 (Golden Harvest). Taco Bell corn biscuits were withdrawn from distribution in the USA in October 2000 (Aventis). Furthermore, when the European Parliament voted on the recommendation of 12/4/2000, an amendment outlining the producers’ responsibilities was rejected.


– The food problem. GMOs are not needed in the North where there is already a problem of over-production and where a more wholesome, environmentally friendly agriculture needs to be promoted. They are also useless to the South, which cannot afford such expensive seed and the pesticides that go with it, and where it could completely disrupt traditional production. It is clear, as is borne out by the FAO, that hunger in the world is not due to insufficient production.

For more information see Grain’s website : https://www.grain.org/. food etc) in trade agreements (eg the UK). And he aims to increase the US corporation’s investments in profit Profit The positive gain yielded from a company’s activity. Net profit is profit after tax. Distributable profit is the part of the net profit which can be distributed to the shareholders. -making sectors like fossil fuel production (Alaska, fracking, drilling), proprietary technology (Nvidia, AI) and, above all, in real estate (Greenland, Panama, Canada Gaza).

Any corporation wants to pay less taxation on its income and profits, and Trump aims to deliver that for his US corporation. So he and his ‘adviser’ Musk have taken a wrecking ball to government departments, their employees and any spending on public services (even defence) to ‘save money’, so that Trump can cut costs ie reduce taxes on corporate profits and taxes on high-paid super-wealthy individuals who sit on his US corporation board and carry out his executive orders.

But it’s not just taxes and the costs of government that must be dismantled. The US corporation must be freed of ‘petty’ regulations on business activities like: safety rules and working conditions in production; anti-corruption laws and laws against unfair trading Market activities
trading Buying and selling of financial instruments such as shares, futures, derivatives, options, and warrants conducted in the hope of making a short-term profit. measures; consumer protection from scams and theft; and controls on financial speculation and dangerous assets like bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. There should be no restraint on Trump’s US corporation to do what it wants. Deregulation is key to Making America Great Again (MAGA).

Trump has directed that the Department of Justice pause all enforcements under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (an anti-bribery and accounting practices legislation intended to maintain integrity in business dealings), for 180 days. Trump aims at eliminating ten regulations for each new regulation issued to “unleash prosperity through deregulation.” He has fired the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and directed all employees to “cease all supervision and examination activity”. The CFPB was created in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis and is tasked with writing and enforcing rules applicable to financial services companies and banks, prioritising consumer protection in lending practices.

Trump wants more speculative tokens, more crypto projects (as launched by his sons) and has started his own memecoin. Newly proposed changes to accounting guidance would make it much easier for banks and asset Asset Something belonging to an individual or a business that has value or the power to earn money (FT). The opposite of assets are liabilities, that is the part of the balance sheet reflecting a company’s resources (the capital contributed by the partners, provisions for contingencies and charges, as well as the outstanding debts). managers to hold crypto tokens — a move that pulls this highly volatile asset closer to the heart of the financial system.

Yet it’s only two years since the US was on the brink of its most serious set of bank failures since the financial storm of 2008. A clutch of regional banks, some the size of Europe’s larger lenders, hit the skids, including Silicon Valley Bank, whose demise came close to sparking a full-blown crisis. SVB’s crash had several immediate causes. Its bond Bond A bond is a stake in a debt issued by a company or governmental body. The holder of the bond, the creditor, is entitled to interest and reimbursement of the principal. If the company is listed, the holder can also sell the bond on a stock-exchange. holdings were crumbling in value as US interest rates Interest rates When A lends money to B, B repays the amount lent by A (the capital) as well as a supplementary sum known as interest, so that A has an interest in agreeing to this financial operation. The interest is determined by the interest rate, which may be high or low. To take a very simple example: if A borrows 100 million dollars for 10 years at a fixed interest rate of 5%, the first year he will repay a tenth of the capital initially borrowed (10 million dollars) plus 5% of the capital owed, i.e. 5 million dollars, that is a total of 15 million dollars. In the second year, he will again repay 10% of the capital borrowed, but the 5% now only applies to the remaining 90 million dollars still due, i.e. 4.5 million dollars, or a total of 14.5 million dollars. And so on, until the tenth year when he will repay the last 10 million dollars, plus 5% of that remaining 10 million dollars, i.e. 0.5 million dollars, giving a total of 10.5 million dollars. Over 10 years, the total amount repaid will come to 127.5 million dollars. The repayment of the capital is not usually made in equal instalments. In the initial years, the repayment concerns mainly the interest, and the proportion of capital repaid increases over the years. In this case, if repayments are stopped, the capital still due is higher…

The nominal interest rate is the rate at which the loan is contracted. The real interest rate is the nominal rate reduced by the rate of inflation. pushed higher. With just a few taps on an app, the bank’s spooked and interconnected tech customer base yanked out deposits at an unsustainable pace, leaving multimillionaires crying out for federal assistance. This deregulation is “a huge mistake and will be dangerous”, said Ken Wilcox, who was chief executive of SVB for a decade up to 2011. “Without good banking regulators, banks will run amok,” he told the FT’s sister publication The Banker.

Trump’s deregulation mantra for his US corporation is now being echoed by the EU and UK corporate states. The EU and the UK have already dropped agreed new international capital requirements for banks under Basel III, following the US’s lead. Former ECB ECB
European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html chief and Goldman Sachs banker Mario Draghi is now yelling for an end to regulations operated by EU member states, which according to him “are far more damaging for growth than any tariffs the US might impose — and their harmful effects are increasing over time. The EU has allowed regulation to track the most innovative part of services — digital — hindering the growth of European tech firms and preventing the economy from unlocking large productivity gains.”

In the UK, Chancellor (finance minister) Rachel Reeves asked that the financial regulators “tear down regulatory barriers” that hold back economic growth, suggesting that post-financial crash regulation has “gone too far”. The chair of the UK’s regulatory body for commercial trading, the Competition and Markets Authority, has been replaced with the former UK head for Amazon! The head of the UK financial ombudsman has also recently resigned, due to clashes over the government’s pro-business approach. Reeves wants a full audit of Britain’s 130 or so regulators to whether some should be scrapped. Reeves told senior bankers that “for too long, we have regulated for risk rather than growth, and that is why we are working with regulators to understand how reform across the board can kick-start economic growth.” That means de-regulate and risk-taking is the order of the day.

Now the EU’s Green Deal, policies supposedly aimed at decarbonising the economy, are being watered down to compete with Trump’s US corporation. The EU commissioner responsible, Ribera, has already ‘postponed’ an anti-deforestation law for a year. Now she wants to cut the number of small and medium companies affected by existing environmental regulations and reduce reporting requirements, thus saving apparently 20% of the cost of regulation. Brussels has estimated the cost of complying with EU rules at €150bn per year, an amount it wants to slash by €37.5bn by 2029. “What we need to avoid is using the word simplification to mean deregulation,” said Ribera. “I think that simplification may be very fair . . . to see how we can make things easier.” But as Heather Grabbe, senior fellow at economic think-tank Bruegel says, these proposed changes “seem to go far beyond simplification which would make reporting easier, and they seem to be moving away from transparency, which is what investors have been asking”.

As for controlling fossil fuel production, forget it. Karen McKee, head of oil and gas major ExxonMobil’s product solutions business, told the FT that future investments in Europe would depend on regulatory clarity from Brussels. “What we’re really looking for now is action” and for Brussels to strip its “well intended” regulation back and allow industry to innovate, she said. “Competitiveness is the focus right now because it’s simply a crisis. We are achieving decarbonisation in Europe through deindustrialisation,” McKee complained. Apparently, the failure of European capital to invest and grow is all down to regulations on fossil fuel production and hindering corporations from competing.

It seems that all the governments are swallowing Trump’s strategy for his US corporation. You can maximise profits if you remove all restraints and make deals. What Trump, the EU and the UK ignore is that de-regulation has never delivered economic growth and increased prosperity. On the contrary, it has merely increased the risk of chaos and collapse. And that means eventually, it damages profitability.

We only have to remember the ludicrous position taken by Britain’s Labour government before the global financial crash in the early 2000s to adopt what they called ‘light-touch regulation’ of the banks. Ed Balls, then the City Minister (now a talk show host) in his first speech to the City of London said “London’s success has been based on three great strengths – the skills, expertise and flexibility of the workforce; a clear commitment to global, open and competitive markets; and light-touch principle-based regulation.” The then chancellor and soon to be prime minister, Gordon Brown spoke to the bankers and said “Today our system of light-touch and risk-based regulation is regularly cited – alongside the City’s internationalism and the skills of those who work here – as one of our chief attractions. It has provided us with a huge competitive advantage and is regarded as the best in the world.” What happened next and where is Britain now?

Rachel Reeves has learnt nothing from the 2008 crash. In her first Mansion House speech as UK Chancellor last November she echoed the call for deregulation. But as Mariana Mazzucato pointed out, according to the OECD OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, created in 1960. It includes the major industrialized countries and has 34 members as of January 2016.

http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/ , the UK ranks second as the least regulated country in product regulation and fourth least for employment. And the World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

continues to rate the UK one of the highest in terms of ‘ease to do business’.

But now it seems, in order to compete with Trump’s US corporation, Europe and the UK must not only engage in a ‘race to the bottom’ over taxes (Reeves refuses to finance public services with a wealth tax or corporate profits tax – on the contrary she wants to cut the latter), Europe and the UK must also engage in a race to the bottom on deregulation. Even the Bank of England’s economists are worried about ‘competitive deregulation’ as it would inevitably increase the risk of a financial meltdown.

Anybody who has read this blog over the years knows that I think regulation over capitalist enterprises does not work, as proven by the global financial crash in 2008, the US regional bank implosion in 2023 and many other examples in finance, business and services. There can be no real effective ‘regulation’ without public ownership controlled by democratic workers organisations. Deregulating may not increase the risk of financial crashes, or more industrial accidents or consumer scams or more corruption – these happen anyway. But it certainly won’t deliver more economic growth and better living standards and public services.

Indeed, that is why Trump’s corporate strategy is set to fail. Increased tariffs on other corporations may give Trump’s US corporation a temporary price advantage but that could soon be eaten away by higher costs for things and services provided by rival national corporations that Trump’s firm still needs and must buy. Accelerating inflation Inflation The cumulated rise of prices as a whole (e.g. a rise in the price of petroleum, eventually leading to a rise in salaries, then to the rise of other prices, etc.). Inflation implies a fall in the value of money since, as time goes by, larger sums are required to purchase particular items. This is the reason why corporate-driven policies seek to keep inflation down. is the risk. And that won’t go down well with the corporation’s employees. Moreover, making deals on trade and real estate or cutting taxes on profits has never led to significant rises in economic growth. That depends on investment in productive sectors. Most of the cuts in taxes will more likely end up in financial speculation by corporations and the super-rich.

If a corporate strategy fails, the CEO normally has to take responsibility and the corporation’s directors and shareholders can turn against the CEO. And if the corporation cannot deliver better wages and conditions for its workers, but only higher inflation and collapsing public services, that could lead to serious problems within the corporation. Watch this space.