VT Foreign Policy by Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
Calls for divestment from BlackRock and other International Sovereign Bonds (ISB), have echoed across Columbia, Yale and many non-Ivy League universities in the United States recently. BlackRock is heavily invested in weapons companies fueling a genocidal war in Palestine. However, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF), debt restructuring operations in the Global South appear designed to ensure BlackRock’s enhanced profitability.
BlackRock the world’s biggest investment fund manager and Sri Lanka’s largest private creditor, has over $ 10 trillion in investments around the world. An estimated 55 countries are in ISB Eurobond debt traps, in or near Default at this time.
From Argentina to Zambia, Global South countries have been subject to IMF ‘debt sustainability treatment’ after their currencies depreciated against the “exorbitantly privileged US dollar’ instantly impoverishing citizens. This, despite US government debt being $34 trillion and counting, with questions raised about America’s debt sustainability also given the Rise of the BRICS and ongoing de-dollarization in what has been termed ‘the Asian 21st Century. Estimates are that one billion is added every100 days to the US government debt.
BlackRock got huge US government Covid-19 ‘bailout funds’ under the CARES Act to asset strip the world during the World Health Organization’s panicdemic lockdowns and global economic meltdown in 2020-21.
Hit by a series of exogenous economic shocks to “Make the Economy Scream”, including mysterious Islamic State (ISIS), claimed attacks on tourist hotels in 2019, and burning ships spilling oil, toxic waste, and plastic pellets along the coast, not to mention two years of the Covid-19 Lockdowns; debt-trapped Sri Lanka staged its first ever Sovereign Default in April 2022.
This was amid distracting Aragalaya protests and a regime change operation. The Rupee crashed– just when the new Cold War between ‘America first’ and China Rising ramped up in the Indian Ocean, enabling the Washington Consensus to effectively capture the strategic island’s Economic Sovereignty and policy autonomy in the name of’ Debt Restructuring’.
Blue and Green Washing BlackRock and Partner Adani
BlackRock, Sri Lanka’s biggest private creditor, is heavily invested in weapons manufacturing and fossil fuels. Facing criticism, the company has been trying to green, blue and pink-wash itself by marketing Environment, Social and Governance bonds (ESG), or Debt for Nature Swaps (DFNS), a.k.a. green and blue bonds, as well as, by funding UNWOMEN programs.
BlackRock’s South Asia partner is India’s richest man Adani, who appears to have achieved a lucrative settlement ex-ante any collective agreement with the bondholders given geopolitical headwinds and high levels of corruption. Sri Lanka sits on major Indian Ocean energy trade and Submarine Data Cable routes…
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