I have read some of Stiglitz' work - that is why now the Asian countries are creating their own bank away from the "Washington CON senus"<br><br>:)<br>M<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Michel Bauwens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michelsub2004@gmail.com">michelsub2004@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">thank you Mike!<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 2:09 PM, mike stagman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:artemesium@yahoo.co.uk" target="_blank">artemesium@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">
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Published on Friday, June 3, 2011 by <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-its-not-just-dominique-strausskahn-the-imf-itself-should-be-on-trial-2292270.html" target="_blank">the Independent/UK</a>
</span>
<div>
<h2>It's Not Just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF Itself Should Be On Trial</h2>
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<h3>Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death</h3>
<div>
by <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.commondreams.org/johann-hari" target="_blank">Johann Hari</a> </div>
</div>
<p style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0, 0, 255)">Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of
the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are
hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed.</p>
<p style="font-weight:bold">So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a
maid in a New York hotel room is � rightly � big news. But imagine a
prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to
death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other
people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent
past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all
recognition. But that is left in the silence.</p><p style="font-weight:bold"><br></p>
<p>To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the
IMF. In <span style="font-weight:bold">1944</span>, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War
gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With
a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John
Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They
wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and
resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a
series of institutions designed for that purpose � and so the IMF was
delivered into the world.</p><p style="font-weight:bold"><br></p><span style="font-weight:bold">
</span><p><span style="font-weight:bold">The IMF�s official job sounds simple and attractive. It is supposedly
there to ensure poor countries don�t fall into debt, and if they do, to
lift them out with loans and economic expertise. It is presented as the
poor world�s best friend and guardian.</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(127, 0, 63)">But beyond the rhetoric, the IMF
was designed to be dominated by a handful of rich countries � and, more
specifically, by their bankers and financial speculators. The IMF works
in their interests, every step of the way.</span></p><p><br></p>
<p>Let�s look at how this plays out on the ground. In the 1990s, the
small country of Malawi in Southeastern Africa was facing severe
economic problems after enduring one of the worst HIV-AIDS epidemics in
the world and surviving a horrific dictatorship. They had to ask the IMF
for help. If the IMF has acted in its official role, it would have
given loans and guided the country to develop in the same way that
Britain and the US and every other successful country had developed �<span style="font-weight:bold"> by
protecting its infant industries, subsidizing its farmers, and
investing in the education and health of its people.</span></p><p><br></p>
<p>That�s what an institution that was concerned with ordinary people �
and accountable to them � would look like<span style="font-weight:bold">. But the IMF did something
very different. They said they would only give assistance if Malawi
agreed to the �structural adjustments� the IMF demanded.<span style="color:rgb(127, 0, 63)"> They ordered
Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned to private
companies and speculators, and to slash spending on the population. They
demanded they stop subsidizing fertilizer, even though it was the only
thing that made it possible for farmers � most of the population � to
grow anything in the country�s feeble and depleted soil. They told them
to prioritize giving money to international bankers over giving money to
the Malawian people.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-weight:bold"><br></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:bold">So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian government had built
up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, they
ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once</span>. <span style="font-weight:bold">They told
Malawi to get their priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off
a loan from a large bank the IMF had told them to take out in the first
place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest</span>. The Malawian president
protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The
grain was sold. The banks were paid.</p><p><br></p>
<p>The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian government had almost
nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the
bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described
it as Malawi�s �worst ever famine.� There had been a much worse crop
failure in 1991-2, but there was no famine because then the government
had grain stocks to distribute. So at least a thousand innocent people
starved to death.</p><p><br></p>
<p>At the height of the starvation, the IMF suspended $47m in aid,
because the government had �slowed� in implementing the marketeeing
�reforms� that had led to the disaster. ActionAid, the leading provider
of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. They
concluded that the IMF �bears responsibility for the disaster.�</p><p>��� <span style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(0, 0, 191)">{By
the way, ActionAid has written that 2/3 of PATENTS are never marketed.�
Patents are a nice part of the whole problem of Slavery by corporations
and their bought-governments.-- M.S.}</span><br></p><p><br></p>
<p>Then, in the starved wreckage, Malawi did something poor countries
are not supposed to do. They told the IMF to get out. Suddenly free to
answer to their own people rather than foreign bankers, Malawi
disregarded all the IMF�s �advice�, and brought back subsidies for the
fertilizer, along with a range of other services to ordinary people.
Within two years, the country was transformed from being a beggar to
being so abundant they were supplying food aid to Uganda and Zimbabwe.</p><p><br></p>
<p>The Malawian famine should have been a distant warning cry for you
and me.<span style="font-weight:bold"> Subordinating the interests of ordinary people to bankers and
speculators caused starvation there. Within a few years, it had crashed
the global economy for us all.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight:bold">\<br></span></p>
<p>In the history of the IMF, this story isn�t an exception: it is the
rule. The organization takes over poor countries, promising it has
medicine that will cure them � and then pours poison down their throats.
Whenever I travel across the poor parts of the world I see the scars
from IMF �structural adjustments� everywhere, from Peru to Ethiopia.
<span style="font-weight:bold;color:rgb(127, 0, 63)">Whole countries have collapsed after being IMF-ed up</span> � most famously
Argentina and Thailand in the 1990s.</p><p><br></p>
<p>Look at some of the organization�s greatest hits. In Kenya, the IMF
insisted the government introduce fees to see the doctor � so the number
of women seeking help or advice on STDs fell by 65 per cent, in one of
the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world.</p><p><br></p>
<p>In Ghana, the IMF insisted the government introduce fees for going to
school � and the number of rural families who could afford to send
their kids crashed by two-thirds. In Zambia, the IMF insisted they slash
health spending � and the number of babies who died doubled. Amazingly
enough, it turns out that shoveling your country�s money to foreign
bankers, rather than your own people, isn�t a great development
strategy.</p><p><br></p>
<p>The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz worked closely with
the IMF for over a decade, until he quit and became a whistle-blower.
He told me a few years ago: �When the IMF arrives in a country, they are
interested in only one thing. <span style="font-weight:bold">How do we make sure the banks and
financial institutions are paid?</span>... It is the IMF that keeps the
[financial] speculators in business. They�re not interested in
development, or what helps a country to get out of poverty.�</p><p><br></p>
<p>Some people call the IMF �inconsistent�, because the institution
supports huge state-funded bank bailouts in the rich world, while
demanding an end to almost all state funding in the poor world. But
that�s only an inconsistency if you are thinking about the realm of
intellectual ideas, rather than <span style="font-weight:bold">raw economic interests</span>. In every
situation, the IMF does what will get more money to bankers and
speculators. If rich governments will hand banks money for nothing in
�bailouts�, great. If poor countries can be forced to hand banks money
in extortionate �repayments�, great. It�s absolutely consistent.</p><p><br></p>
<p>Some people claim that Strauss-Kahn was a �reformer� who changed the
IMF after he took over in 2009. Certainly, there was a shift in rhetoric
� but detailed study by Dr Daniela Gabor of the University of the West
of England has shown that the substance is business-as-usual.</p><p><br></p>
<p>Look, for example, at Hungary. After the 2008 crash, the IMF lauded
them for keeping to their original deficit target by <span style="font-weight:bold">slashing public
services</span>. The horrified Hungarian people responded by kicking the
government out, and choosing a party that promised to make the banks pay
for the crisis they had created. They introduced a 0.7 per cent levy on
the banks (four times higher than anywhere else). The IMF went crazy.
They said this was �highly distortive� for banking activity � unlike the
bailouts, of course � and shrieked that it would cause the banks to
flee from the country. The IMF shut down their entire Hungary program to
intimidate them.</p><p><br></p>
<p>But the collapse predicted by the IMF didn�t happen. Hungary kept on
pursuing sensible moderate measures, instead of punishing the
population. They imposed taxes on the hugely profitable sectors of
retail, energy and telecoms, and took funds from private pensions to pay
the deficit. The IMF shrieked at every step, and demanded cuts for
ordinary Hungarians instead. It was the same old agenda, with the same
old threats. Strauss-Kahn did the same in almost all the poor countries
where the IMF operated, from El Salvador to Pakistan to Ethiopia, where
big cuts in subsidies for ordinary people have been imposed. Plenty have
been intimidated into harming their own interests. The US-based think
tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research found 31 of 41 IMF
agreements require �pro-cyclical� macroeconomic policies � pushing them
further into recession.</p><p><br></p>
<p>It is not only Strauss-Kahn who should be on trial. It is the
institution he has been running. There�s an inane debate in the press
about who should be the next head of the IMF, as if we were discussing
who should run the local Milk Board. But if we took the idea of human
equality seriously, and remembered all the people who have been
impoverished, starved and killed by this institution, we would be
discussing the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission �
and how to disband the IMF entirely and start again.</p><p><br></p>
<p>If Strauss-Kahn is guilty, I suspect I know how it happened. He must
have mistaken the maid for a poor country in financial trouble. Heads of
the IMF have, after all, been allowed to rape them with impunity for
years.</p><p><br></p> <div>� 2011 Independent/UK</div>
<div style="float:left;padding:1px 15px 15px 0pt">
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.commondreams.org/johann-hari" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/author_photo/johann_hari.jpg" alt="Johann Hari" title="Johann Hari" height="90" width="90"></a> </div>
Johann Hari is a columnist for <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/" target="_blank">the London Independent</a>.
He has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central
African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has
appeared in publications all over the world. </td></tr></tbody></table></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br></div></div><font color="#888888">-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a>� - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br>
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