Life and debt, - Movie Review Example

A Review of Life and Debt, by Stephanie Black Jamaican economy derives its earnings through agriculture, manufacturing, financial and insurance services, with tourism, mining of bauxite, and remittances as the leading earners of foreign exchange. However, tourism, mining and remittances have also been experiencing a decline in their operations. Along with these, Jamaica faces long-term problems such as extensive merchandise trade deficit and large-scale unemployment. This high unemployment rate has induced people to commit crimes, adding more to the burden of its falling economy [1].

Due to the terrible situation it is in, the then Prime Minister Michael Manley took the option of borrowing money from international lending agencies. Unfortunately, due to global economic policies set by sovereign states like US, Jamaica was now obscure and heavily burdened with debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and other international lending agencies. It has to simultaneously reform its economy despite high cost of energy while continuing to pay for its debts.

Like Jamaica, Ethiopia, a developing country in Eastern Africa, also encounters poverty issues. Its economic activities depend widely on agriculture, including marketing, processing, and export of agricultural products. Production is done by small-scale farmers and enterprises and a large part of commodity exports is provided by the small agricultural cash-crop sector. Coffee is the largest foreign exchange earner. Being a Third World country, Ethiopia has minimal access to banking and financial services, making it one of, if not the least monetized country in the world.

From this, it can be assumed that the global economic crisis may not likely affect much of the country’s economical activities, because of the fact that it is not intertwined with any western countries and the rest of the world. On the other hand, Ethiopia garners much of its developmental programs from aids and investments from the outside world. Also, in Jamaica, remittances from abroad may soon be cut resulting in Jamaican workers losing their jobs. Export products such as coffee and gold has declined in price in the international market while the commodity price boom further escalated the inflationary pressures on several African countries.

Therefore, developing countries like Jamaica and Ethiopia are the ones highly affected with the crisis the world is experiencing. It is for that reason that they have not yet recovered from a fallen economy, and now another surge of fiscal meltdown is happening. What is seen in the documentary Life and Debt both applies to these two countries. As the world gets complicated and plagued by economical problems with each passing day, no country is exempted from experiencing economic instability and crisis, even developed countries like the United States.

US’ failure to control its rampant deficit spending poses a big threat to the global economy as this may cause immediate increase in interest rates, which is potentially harmful to many developing countries and countries with emerging markets. US President Barrack Obama plans to reduce its national debt by spending cuts and tax increases. The developed countries are fortunate, as they have sufficient funds to continue with their economic and fiscal proceedings. There’s not much pressure or difficulty felt in terms of their standard of living.

However, from Jamaica and Ethiopia’s standpoint, it is nearly impossible to recover now that the supermajority of IMF is in recession too. Jamaica is just one of the countries confronted with the risk caused by higher fuel and food prices, as well as unemployment. Since oil is mostly used as an input resource in the production processes in industries, oil price hike is directly related to increased costs in the supply chain. This in turn is being passed to the burden of the consumers, thus the emergence of high-priced commodities.

Inflation stagnates the consumers to acquire goods because they have low income, thus low purchasing power. When the demand of the people for a certain product or service decreases because of its relatively high price, thus suppliers tend to produce less. This will then contribute to the bankruptcy and downfall of many business enterprises. Roughly everyone exists and strives for the odds of their survival. Due to structural adjustment policies imposed by the IMF to its borrowing countries including Jamaica, they have further impeded development growths and only made things worse.

The IMF lends money to these low-income countries which is payable for short-terms only with a lot of conditions attached, thought to be unjust on the borrowing countries’ part. Consequently, Jamaica’s debt and interest payment even exceeds the amount it receives in financial resources. Hence, the so-called benefits that Jamaica should be receiving even brought negative impact to its economy. Supposedly, the IMF should advise member countries in implementing economic and financial policies that promote stability, reduce vulnerability to crisis, and encourage sustained growth and high standards of living [2].

But what happened in Jamaica is quite the opposite. The IMF has prescribed Jamaica to devaluate, reduce the local labor cost, and pay for higher interest rates to balance its financial resources at the same time securing payments for its debts. One of these conditions of the IMF include the establishment of free trade zones wherein workers/laborers are given low wages and has to work in substandard working conditions. Most of all, they are not allowed to form unions and associations; anyone who does not abide with the rules are immediately fired.

This however does not help at all, but because of so much poverty Jamaicans still resort to working in these factories. US provide many job opportunities, but use its authority to put Jamaicans under their power. In terms of businesses, US creates policies that will only weaken their operations. Like for example, US will force Jamaica to compete with other large-scale production while eliminating subsidies to Jamaica’s local industry. These policies supposedly, are to benefit Jamaica as stated in the IMF’s goal, by incorporating them into the global market, but what actually happens is that it only makes the people suffer, business enterprises to eventually close down, therefore aggravating the worsening economy of the nation.

This is only to the advantage of the commercial banks that collect a great deal of interest. Due to these ongoing policies, Jamaicans face the risk of food insecurity. Since laborers under the Free Trade Zones receive minimal wage insufficient to meet their family’s needs, food is often sacrificed. Same is true with the local businesses which provide jobs to the natives. The workforce may then lose their job because of the unfair system of trade. Life and Debt is excellent in portraying the illusion of appearances in Jamaica.

Initially showing Jamaica’s rich and beautiful natural resources, this documentary enables one to look at different points of view of people. To a tourist’s point of view, they are left unaware of the adversity the nation is actually in. At the same time, it also looks at the opinions and grievances of the workforce and the natives through actual interviews with them, and a speech from former Prime Minister Michael Manley. This simultaneous shift of point of views in the documentary challenges the viewer to weigh the proportionalities and effects of such policies on developing countries like Jamaica.

Sources: 1 Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2032.htm. April 6,2011 2Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/globstab.htm. March 18, 2011