US wars aggravating global economic crisis : Economist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Peter Koenig, a former World Bank economist from Lima, to talk about a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in which it predicts a rise in global unemployment rate for the next two years and a downturn in key emerging economies.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It is rather a bleak picture that the ILO is painting as far as employment figures go and growth goes in the coming two years. What do you make of it?

Koenig: Yes, indeed it is bleak. I would even add to this a few sum-up figures that ILO projects; it is about 300,000,000 people unemployed by 2017 and this does not include shadow figure of at least I would say 30 to 50 percent especially from developing countries where no exact statistics are held and where the line between partial employment and unemployment is very blurred. It also does not include about 60 million refugees, who according to UNHCR, are flooding the world in camps and moving around and of course they are in very precarious conditions health-wise, nutrition-wise and they are almost all unemployed. Plus to that, the report does not particularly refer to the current flooding to Europe, especially Germany which may increase unemployment in the European Union in the years to come.

Press TV: Looking at all these different factors, where are our world leaders failing in being able to narrow down and solve this issue as the ILO said that the employment rate has now recovered since the 2008 financial downturn?

Koenig: Yes, that is correct. And I do not think that they will recover within short. I think this crisis is not just happening. It is directed, is fabricated, and is maintained by a globalized lead led by Washington and supported by their war machines, Pentagon and NATO, and the wars as we know are conflicts throughout the world which are highly profitable and they are also highly destructive. They destroy the infrastructure and productive capacity of entire countries like Syria and unemployment therefore becomes astronomical and I would also add to this that the worldwide economic crisis is continued to be manipulated very much on purpose by the very globalization where rich industrialized countries transfer their manufacturing capacity to low cost countries where the jobs that are created are vulnerable and precarious, there are no social insurance, no job security, minimal income and all of this adds to crisis. They become like Marx said once that unemployment is a caution for capital and the caution for capital right now worldwide I would estimate is around 10 percent and it could go up even higher if the crisis does not improve.

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