My response to Morgan Stanley’s prediction about Pakistan

Anayat Baig

If there is more oil left in some parts of the world, U.S believes that those parts of the world need more democracy. Once an English teacher asked his students, “Pakistan will be the next biggest economy.” What is the tense of this sentence? One student replied, “Future Impossible Tense.”

It was on the news today that “Pakistan is next Rising Economy of World-Morgan Stanley Predicts.” Pakistanis were sharing the news with extreme joy and happiness about this future impossible tense. This Morgan Stanley prediction was the part of a lecture by Mr. David Darst, the chief investment strategist of the Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. I was also a part of this lecture. It was conducted on 27^th of January 2015 at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi and the topic was “Where is the global capital going?” I was very excited to hear about the flow of capital from a pioneer investor of pioneer companies of an imperialist country. The lecture went on for almost one and half hours and by the end of the first hour I realized that I wasted one precious hour of my academic life. His whole speech reflected the fear of U.S. towards the rise of China. He repeatedly emphasized on role of the youth of Pakistan to understand the possible impacts of Chinese investments in Pakistan but he did not bother to look around the role of U.S. in Pakistan and its occupied territories. He was unable to highlight the impacts of American investments in this area. He was not ready to listen or to talk about the role of US-led NGOs in Pakistan, its occupied territories and rest of the developing world.

According to his view the themes for investors to watch in 2015 are:

1. The effect of China’s interest rate reduction (since 7/2012), corruption, crack down and real estate price movements on the economic activity.
2. Can the Fed successfully manage its forward guidance?
3. Will meaningful structural reform happen in the wake of Shinzo Abe’s (Japan’s Prime Minister’s) electoral mandate achieved on 12/14/14?
4. Will the European central bank undertake sovereign bond asset purchases in size to stem dis-inflationary pressure?
5. With record-high profit margins, can US corporations achieve significant revenue and profits growth and P/E (price-earning) expansion?
6. Political and geo-political developments in the Ukraine, Greece, Iraq/Syria/Israel/Egypt/Turkey/Iran/Yemen/Libya and China/Japan/South Korea/Taiwan/ Thailand.

7. The effects of meaningfully lower oil prices on energy junk bonds and Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Mexico and other oil producing countries.

Based on these themes he claims that Pakistan is the next biggest economy.

He also showed the traditional hatred of Imperialism towards Socialism and Communism. He used the term Fascism for Communism and he repeatedly compared Hitler with Lenin, Mao and Stalin. He said, “17th Century was the end of Monarchy, 18th century was the end of Slavery, 19th century was the end of Fascism and/or Communism [highlighting the pictures of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung and Hitler] and 20th century will be the end of oppression against women.” To support his idea of 20th century being the century of end of oppression against women he said that more than 20 multi-national companies in U.S. are led by Women. According to his poor opinion USA has always been the responsible ally to end any type of oppression against human beings. He was telling these stories in a way that people could start believing that U.S. must had played a vital role in the end of fascism, monarchy and slavery in the past. In the history, the end of monarchy, slavery and fascism was made possible by the strong movements of resistance of the oppressed classes? Though, bad times have gone but the question is still there. Did Monarchy end? Are there no slaves in the world today? Is Fascism and Totalitarianism not in practice today? In my opinion, the monopoly of US is similar to the monarchy of 17^th century. The labor’s oppression in China, the kings of Saudi Arabia (the eternal friends of US) and the Kingdom of UK cannot be ignored at all. The developing countries are being made slaves by severe economic conditions by the economic monsters. Yes! I believe that slavery, monarchy and fascism still exist. Since, it belongs most to the imperialist blogs, so it is not highlighted in the corporate media.  Anyways, Mr. David also distributed a 3 pager handout to the audience. The front page was telling when Mr. David will come live on CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox News for his analysis on world economy and assets allocation. Other pages were full of statistics and decimal figures. No person, other than an economist could understand what was written on those pages and what it was about.

Interestingly, Mr. David Darst also owns or is a strong shareholder of top-11 multinational companies of the world including 5 pharmaceutical companies (Medtronic, Pfizer, Abbott, Johnson and Johnson and Novartis), Coca-Cola, BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises, a telecom company), Exxon Mobil, Baker and Schlumberger. So the point is, why was he emphasizing on youth to understand the impact of Chinese investment on Pakistan? China is not our god-father. Both China and America have motives of their interest. In my opinion, Mr. Darst was here to create a good will of his company among its most innocent and foolish customers. We do not know much about these shrewd and brutal business tactics but what we know is that, the flow of capital is very much clear and it is towards the imperialist countries from the developing countries. The best example of which is Pakistan, who sells rice and cotton to buy tanks and missiles.

The contributor can be reached at https://twitter.com/anayatbaig, or anayatbaig@gmail.com

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Pamir Times is the pioneering community news and views portal of Gilgit – Baltistan, Kohistan, Chitral and the surrounding mountain areas. It is a voluntary, not-for-profit, non-partisan and independent venture initiated by the youth.

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