Stealth Move in Washington Aims to Get $100 Billion for IMF Without Congressional Debate
"You don't have to do this." Those are the near-last words of several victims in the Coen brothers' classic, No Country for Old Men, as they try to convince the movie's unrelenting assassin that he should spare them. The assassin, played by Javier Bardem, finds this annoying, because in his mind these murders are pre-determined.
So it is with the IMF's continuing confrontations with its borrowers, with one government after another pleading: "You don't have to do this." Turkey and Latvia were in the news last week, having joined the roster of governments whose IMF disbursements are being withheld because they find it politically impossible to impose the required punishments on their citizens.
The IMF sees these measures as necessary and pre-determined - in most cases by the borrowing countries' having run-up unsustainable external or budget imbalances. But in fact the Fund has a long track record - dating back decades - of imposing unnecessary and often harmful conditions on borrowing countries.
Latvia missed a 200 million euro disbursement from the IMF in March for not cutting its budget enough. According to press reports, the government wants to run a budget deficit of seven percent of GDP for this year, and the IMF wants five percent. Latvia is already cutting its budget by 40 percent, and is planning to close some public hospitals and schools in order to make the IMF's targets, prompting street protests.
Latvia's GDP crashed by 18 percent in the first quarter of this year, after a 10.3 percent drop in the preceding quarter. These are among the worst declines in the world. This indicates that the IMF's prescription is serious overkill. The purpose of IMF aid is supposedly to make any necessary adjustment easier, not worse.
In Pakistan, it would be surprising if the U.S. Treasury department, which is the principal overseer of the IMF, did not see a need to ease up on the contractionary IMF conditions there. The government of nuclear-armed Pakistan is facing serious political problems right now, having recently launched a major offensive against a growing Taliban insurgency. Slowing Pakistan's economy at a time when the global economic crisis is already doing that may not be the best policy from the point of view of political stability. The Fund has negotiated an increase in Pakistan's fiscal deficit from 3.4 percent to 4.6 percent of GDP, but is holding the line against lowering interest rates.
In almost all of its standby arrangements negotiated over the last year, the IMF has included conditions that will reduce output and employment in situations where economies are already shrinking.
Yet here in Washington there is a rush to get the IMF more money without any Congressional hearings or debate. We are told that poor countries will suffer if the Fund does not get a $108 billion appropriation from Congress immediately. But this is nonsense.
If we add up all of the IMF's commitments under 16 Standby Arrangements negotiated since the crisis intensified last year, the total is less than $46 billion. The poorest countries will not be allowed to borrow anywhere near that amount. The IMF already has $215 billion on hand, plus more than $100 billion in gold reserves. It plans to create another $250 billion in SDR's, i.e. the Fund's currency. Even if we include the $67.5 billion that Mexico ($47 billion) and Poland ($20.5 billion) together can tap under the Fund's Flexible Credit Line, it is clear the Fund is trying to get hundreds of billions of dollars more than it is likely to need. And it has at least ten times the money that the poor countries - whose needs are pocket change compared to IMF resources - will ever be allowed to borrow.
Yet the Obama administration, in a surprise move out of nowhere on Tuesday, decided to try and attach the $108 billion for the IMF to another spending bill in order to circumvent the normal legislative process. The reason for this stealth maneuver is that they might run into trouble in the House, where legislators are wary of voting for multi-billion blank checks after the backlash against the TARP financial bailout. They will try to convince Congress to approve this money without hearings or debate with the idea that it must be done in order to save poor people in poor countries.
Congress should be met with a chorus of opposition: "You don't have to do this."
This column was published by The Guardian Unlimited on May 13, 2009.
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Ode to the IMF.
One ring to rule them all
One ring to find them
One ring to bring them ALL
And in the Darkness bind them.
Of course credit for the above verse comes from Proffesor Tolkien.
I don't think he would mind.
Once when ask if the Great Darkness he describes in his books as like Hitler , or Stalinism, the reportedly smiled and shook his head and said ' Maybe from across the Water' Or words to that effect.
Another $100 biliion slipped to the Banksters. $100 billion would have saved our auto industry
Didn't our new president call the bank collapse the Remnants of the old failed polices, or something to that effect.
Well If they are the old and the failed why are we investing in them.
I read somewhere that most countries that delt with the IMF since the 90s have experianced economic collapse.
Of course in latin America before the 90s they either ended in revolution or slavery.
Would you invest in a business with this track record?
The American taxpayer , Or at least myself until recently , fails to see what is happening with the takeover of the world by Globalist/G8 / IMF /WTO.
Kathy Gifford got upset that she had money invested in a slave/Shoe company in Indonisia. Sold her stock . What We seemed not to understand is that WE ALL have contributed money to the IMF and therefore are just as bad as Gifford. We just won't get a return on our stocks.
We just get to buy cheap running shoes, and more junk . While The brutal Fascist Corporate giants reap the real profits and make their plans to take over annother country.
All of these cheap imports we enjoy are brought to us by The G8 and the IMF, with Slave Labor. But wait we're against Slavery, didn't we settle that in 1865. Well We're not against slave labor in
Indonisiea , China , Bolivia , Venezualla( sp?).
America needs to realize WE ,,YOU and I are holding these people slaves.
Their only recourse is usally a bloody revolution. In which OUR leaders brand them as left wing communist gangsterstrying to destroy our beloved Capitalizm.
So we have found the Enemy, and They are US. But we have also found these simple working people in other countries and even here in the US who are fighting this Horror, and They are US to!
So whose side are you on? The poor honest working man's , or the Giant Corporate Slave Holder.
Very nicely said,I believe you are right,but the big issue with me is As a country we don`t manufacture anything any longer we are the worlds largest importer of goods ,we are a in the top 5 exporters our our natural resources and the banks run this country.As long as their is no made in America tag on it we have a problem,slave labor and greed along with our neo liberal trade policy`s have have brought about a resurgence in slave labor around the world.Watc
"...we are the worlds largest importer of goods ,we are a in the top 5 exporters our our natural resources.
As I said below, and you just summarized, this is the classic definition of a Colony! And people who live in colonies have only the rights given to them by the Corporations that own them.
Alright, Obama acolytes; explain this one away. If all of us have read The Shock Doctrine and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, then I'd assume that Obama has, as well. What, then, are we to conclude? Whoever is calling the shots on this one is the true power behind the throne? This is no abstraction; it is all too real. Wake up! We could very well be next if we continue to weakly capitulate to this madness, twisting ourselves into knots and debasing our intellects to find new excuses for Obama's string of capitulations to the banking interests. It has been said that Kennedy's mistake lay in thinking that he was really the President. It seems, increasingly, that Obama is determined not to make that mistake.
Longtime
When I talk to people out in the world, about the shock doctrine, and Neoliberal Globalist they look at me like I'm one of those street kooks yelling "The end of the world is here"
Some see and understand but say," What can I do, I just want bo be left alone"
Until today I did not realize the demonstrators in Europe and Latin America were fighting this Ememy. I thought they just didn't like George Bush.
Here on HuffPost people are aware, But when you go outside or turn the TV on it looks like life going on as usual.
We need a PLAN, We NEED a Strategy , Who are the people fighting the G8 in Europe?, Who are the people in Latin America?, Who were the people in Seattle?
We are all disjointed little groups .
IF....IF We are right, This is going to take more than just US grousing on this website about " Aw this ain't right " We are going to have to make ourselves heard. Congress and President aren't listening!
If we are right ,, WE are about to lose this Country, and the world will be a darker place.
Fore more information, please read:
"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" - John Perkins http://www
Swinging the clubs tomorrow for the first time in a long time. Evidently have golf on the mind.
Could this be what BO meant about more transparancy?
I've been saying it for months now---Wait until it is our turn!
When the last taxpayer dollar has been given away to the banks, and nothing has been done to restructure the system that allowed this theft, America will be in line with Latvia and the others, begging for "loan" from the IMF.
Our economy will be in shambles, people will be desperate, and the terms of our National Bailout will include the dismantling of our Constitution and our return to a Colony status. Privatization of all our infrastructure and resources and a strict repayment schedule that depresses wages, jobs, saving, and the growth of our industry. We will sell only raw materials and buy only finished goods from other countries. The banks will finally own us.
The funniest thing about this, is that as recently as just a few months ago, there was doubt about the IMF even surviving as it had no funding! Now, why would Obama and his Wall Street crew want to give them another 108 Billion on the sly?
A few months ago I was pleased when I read that the IMF was on the ropes. I thought their misdeeds in Latin America, and other places, had finally done them in.
Now Obama is giving them steroids! This is so as*backward for our times!
The globalists are so close to dominating the planet, they can taste it, and then woe is us all, all over the planet. I hope this country wakes up before they, the globalists, of which the neocons are a subset, have drained the treasury so much that we are back to the dark ages, and there is no way to turn back. Glimmers of hope are the new populist regimes in Latin America who recovered when they threw out the World Bank, IMF, and other "economic hitmen"* and listened to their people.
* Read John Perkins' book "Confessions of an economic hitman".
Once they got China they were pretty well on the way, We have been buying the junk and financeing our own Fascist Slave State.
Lenin once said that Ameica would pay for the rope that would hang themselves. I bet he never dreamed it would be the Capitalist Fascist doing the hanging though.
I've seen it too, since reading the Shock Doctrine, things seem to be going as planned.
Homeland security/Blackwater is allready in place in case our Army and police won't show us where our place is.
Your right about the colony status for sure, I was flipping thru the channels and stopped at Faux News and the Beckster had the people and some Reich wing nut jobs and were talking about gun control, the tenth Amendment which is about states rights and people talking about big gov`t with Obama and saying Bush would never try stuff like this, only thing is Bush did other things that big gov`t does like start wars, wiretapping, torture and other illegal activities that they think are ok because they kept us safe from terrorist,even though 9-11 happened on the Shrubs watch.Thes
Crease I just can't bear to watch Faux news any more, not even for a laugh.
and it hurts my jaw to say this.
But somehow we are going to have to communicate with these...uh
who are watching them. Because one of these days when the Constitution is suspended and Martial Law is the law. We will still be blaming them and them us.
And we will be SO $cre#ed.
They IMF dumps gold reserves on the market whenever gold gets close to $1000/ounce. They effectively controls the gold market. They don't need any tax dollars.
Yet the Obama administra
I just love this new transparency and change stuff. The one kind of forgot about posting this smarmy amendment on the web site for five day review.
Same as Bush
"Yet the Obama administration, in a surprise move out of nowhere on Tuesday, decided to try and attach the $108 billion for the IMF to another spending bill in order to circumvent the normal legislative process."
They're all the same - change we can bereave in.
The IMF is doing to the U.S. what it's done around the world, make them PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING so that we are returned to the robber barons' era. I say NO WAY!!
Read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. It's fascinating and heartbreaking reading, case studies, country by country. The shock doctrine is now at our doors.
Yes, it is at our doors and it is working. A compliant complicit media is necessary to further confuse people and make them easier to submit.
Reading The Shock Doctrine is one of the best ways to understand what is going on now.
From the so called financial crisis back in September where Democrats and Republican insiders teamed up to beat down their few honest reps who opposed the first $800 billion dollar bailout, to the trillion dollar stimulus crisis, to the swine flue, to the non stop Iran is gonna nuke us fear mongering.
None of these problems are ever discussed rationally, their root causes are never examined or seriously debated.
They are simply over hyped, sensationalized and the end result is always;
a) more money transferred from people to corporations
b) more personal freedoms are eroded or taken away from us
c) more war, more profit for our military industrial complex
d) less autonomy for countries, a reduction in social programs for people accompanied by tax breaks and more cake for big corporations
The IMF is one tool to increase the power of globalization zealots as it weakens the unique strengths of every country it occupies. Read that book.
http://www
Surprise..
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