Mark Weisbrot

One of the great myths about the Argentine economy that is repeated nearly every day is that the rapid growth of the Argentine economy during the past decade has been a "commodity export boom." For example, The New York Times reported last week: "Riding an export boom for...

It has become a ritual: Every six months I debate the IMF at their annual meetings, most recently represented by their Deputy Director for Europe. It takes place in the same room of that giant greenhouse-looking World Bank building on 19th Street in Washington, D.C. And the IMF's...

The Argentine government's decision to re-nationalize its formerly state-owned oil and gas company, YPF, has been greeted with howls of outrage, threats, forecasts of rage and ruin, and a rude bit of name-calling in the international press.

We have heard all this before. When the Argentine government defaulted on its...

France's conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy, ran for office in 2007 on a program of making the French economy more like that of the United States. He picked a bad time for that: the U.S. was on the brink of its worst recession since the Great Depression, and would help drag...

The opening up of the contest for World Bank president is a historic change whose significance has not been fully appreciated. This is not surprising, given the widespread misunderstanding of the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank).

The IMF's loss of power over most middle-income countries,...

Hondurans are still suffering from the effects of the June 2009 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of President Mel Zelaya. The coup has unleashed a wave of violence against political opposition, journalists, small farmers and others, with impunity for the security forces that have been...

One of the most important changes that Lula da Silva brought to Brazil was in its foreign policy. As he has described it, prior administrations looked almost exclusively to the United States or Europe for their orientation in the world. But Lula saw that there was much to be gained...

When the "international community" blames Haiti for its political troubles, the underlying concept is usually that Haitians are not ready for democracy. But it is Washington that is not ready for democracy in Haiti.

Haitians have been ready for democracy for many decades. They were ready when they got massacred...

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank gathered in Washington for their annual Spring Meetings, there was more talk about how much the IMF has changed. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn quoted John Maynard Keynes in his speech on Wednesday at the Brookings Institution:

"The...

Yesterday the United States expelled the Ambassador from Ecuador, in retaliation for Wednesday's expulsion of the U.S Ambassador from Ecuador. This now leaves the United States without ambassadorial relations in three South American countries -- Bolivia and Venezuela being the other two -- thus surpassing the Bush Administration in its...

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

That was Sen. Barack Obama on December 20, 2007, opposing the idea that President Bush could bomb Iran without...

Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is scheduled to return to his homeland this week after seven years in exile in South Africa. He was overthrown - for the second time--in a 2004 coup organized by the United States and its allies. Washington has gone to great...

With the latest turn of events in Wisconsin, Republican state senators have circumvented the need for a quorum vote on Scott Walker's budget bill by leaving out the fiscal clauses and passing the new laws curbing collective bargaining rights for state and public employees. This dubious tactical maneuver...

It has become fashionable since Spain's economy began to decline to make comparisons to Germany, which is rebounding strongly. The idea is that the Germans went through their restructuring, got organized labor under control, and thereby made their economy more competitive. According to this narrative, this is the key to...

In 1915 the U.S. Marines invaded Haiti, occupying the country until 1934. U.S. officials rewrote the Haitian constitution, and when the Haitian national assembly refused to ratify it, they dissolved the assembly. They then held a "referendum" in which about five percent of the electorate voted and approved the new...

As President Obama begins the second half of his term with a campaign for "jobs and competitiveness," we would do well to consider how he might achieve these worthy goals. It is jobs that matter most to the vast majority of Americans, and unemployment remains at 9.4 percent -- about...

It didn't get much attention in the media, but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday. After taping interviews on five big Sunday talk shows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly...

Haiti's infamous dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier, returned to his country this week, while the country's first elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is kept out. These two facts really say everything about Washington's policy toward Haiti, and our government's respect for democracy in that country and in the region.

Asked about the...

As the infamous dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier returns to Haiti after 25 years in exile in the south of France, the U.S. State Department and the French Foreign Ministry have been ratcheting up the pressure on the impoverished, earthquake-destroyed, and cholera stricken country of Haiti.

The pressure...

What is it about Haiti that makes the "international community" think they have the right to decide the country's fate without the consent of the governed? Yes, Haiti is a poor country, but Haitians have fought very hard and lost many lives for the right to vote and elect a...