Among conservative international relations realists, each nation-state is politically and economically separate and is solely responsible for itself. When those with that line of thinking are asked to explain why the global north has more wealth than the global south, they reach for metaphors like “culture” and “inability to delay gratification” that is supposed to be required by capitalism. But as Jack Rasmus points out, Brazil and Argentina are in big economic trouble because of: a) domination of world currency by the dollar; b) the control of credit by the US dollar, and; c) the central banks’ control over interest rates. The image for this post suggests the general patterns of exploitation. The US is in the core and Brazil and Argentina are in the semi-periphery.
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