He was the head honcho of First National City Bank of NY when it was still a traditional bank.Wriston transformed the business when he realized that he could lend enormous sums of money at above market interest rates to impoverished countries using their raw material base or other assets as collateral.In that scheme he was able to enlist the services of kleptomaniac dictators like Videla of Argentina,Collor of Brazil and assorted thugs in Africa, Middle East and Asia. He was aided and abetted in this nefarious enterprise by the CIA and other agencies which stood at the ready whenever anyone opposed their schemes to bankrupt the countries to whom they lent the money.This scheme is very well documented in the CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN by John Perkins.
What is important to realize is that none of the targeted countries had the ability to service the loans.Argentina, a good case in point, was so thoroughly impoverished many Argentines found themselves destitute in a matter of months.That, in turn, led to the election of men like Kirchner who have restored a semblance of sanity to their economy.In the process,American economic models have been permanently tarnished and no amount of cajoling by the Harvard/University of Chicago charlatans will ever restore American credibility in the hemisphere.
Wriston and his successors,I believe, have wrought as much suffering as the warmongers like Bush-Cheney and Rumsfeld. Long time ago, I was in New Delhi on a business trip when David Rockefeller, who was competing with Walter Wriston for the title of who can bankrupt the most countries, was trying to sell India the same prescription.In retrospect, I have come to have a great deal of respect for India’s financvial people who simply turned down Rockefeller saying that India could not afford his loans and would develop its economy on a slower self reliant schedule. That, of course, earned India the wrath of the banks.