The U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) terminated its asset purchases last October when disaster scenarios were being written for developing countries just like today. The Fed's termination of asset purchases accompanied the idea that it would make a faster decision on interest rate hikes. Indeed, this was an attempt to export the crisis to developing countries. The crises faced by developed countries, and the U.S. in particular, was gradually intensifying and growing into a chronic one.

During his address to the Republican-dominated United States House of Representatives in January 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama touched on both the causes and solutions of the crisis. He said, "We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules." Obama also referred to Warred Buffet who said that they would all go bankrupt if the wealthy did not agree to pay higher taxes and that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than himself. Interestingly enough, a news report on the BBC reported that Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, watched the speech alongside First Lady Michelle Obama. Obama continued his speech, which was a historic one for me, with the following statements, "Tax reform should follow the Buffett Rule. If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes (…) Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense."

As Thomas Piketty put forth in his "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" the "r>g" pattern (where "r" stands for the average annual rate of return on capital, including profits, dividends, interest, rents, and other income from capital, expressed as a percentage of its total value, and "g" stands for the rate of growth of the economy, that is, the annual increase in income or output) was the true cause of the crisis and the crisis would not be overcome unless this formula became reversed. This was also the reason why the U.S. and other developed countries failed to switch to a true growth and a sustainable economic cycle. For instance, in the U.S., the tax burden for those who have a higher income than $450,000 rose to 39.6 percent, tax reductions continued for the other section where social cuts were not implemented. Since the 1990s, the Republicans, driven by neoliberal fallacies, have been pushing the narrative that "Everyone is not born equal. But capitalism is such a system that everyone can make themselves equal to those who are at the top." This tale, which prevailed in the U.S., is now collapsing there with the current crisis. This collapse will not bring old Keynesian policies and the welfare state that was formed in Europe. Neoliberal economic practices were born as a response to statist economies that fizzled out in the 1980s. As the most radical form of welfare state practices in the West, the Soviet Union went out of existence at the same time.

Today, it is a futile attempt for the Fed to seek a remedy for this crisis by increasing balance sheets and to create a new balance by launching an interest rate hike. This is because unemployment in the U.S. will never reach the desired level under current circumstances. Although circumstances do not allow it and the U.S. has not achieved its main objectives, we suppose that the Fed's interest rate increase will lead to financial crises in developing countries as in the 1990s and insistently produce scenarios through possible interest rate hikes. This, beyond any doubt, is the U.S.'s attempt to kill two birds with one stone. First, it does not want to allow countries, such as Turkey and Brazil, to leave the framework of the Washington Consensus. It aims to make such countries' central banks increase interest rates in order to achieve inflation targets and wants to deter these countries from their invest-oriented and industry-oriented paths and to make them pursue the path of global financial oligarchy.

Second, the U.S. wants to maintain its self-financing system by pushing up the demand for the dollar in the short term, as the fall in the growth of Asian countries brings down these countries' demand for dollars and U.S. treasury bills. It also aims to make up for the falling profit rates in traditional war-based sectors such as iron-steel and petrochemical industries and to extend the lifespan of these sectors.

It goes without saying that the Fed's interest rate hikes cannot disturb developing countries as much as before; quite the contrary, a constantly overvalued dollar will relegate the U.S. in global competition and highlight Europe and Asia. Countries should abandon using the dollar in their trades and should form clearing unions with their own currencies, which will bring an end to the U.S.-led Bretton-Woods system. Due to all this, countries like Brazil and Turkey should not be discouraged by such moves that the U.S. makes through the Fed. All countries, particularly developing countries, should attach importance to policies that can further improve income distribution and seek the ways of trade that can be carried out through local currencies, rather than continuing with the dollar-based monetary system.