Deciding fates: Christine Lagarde (IMF) and Mario Draghi (ECB) at talks on Greece’s debt, Brussels, 2015
Jasper Juinen · Bloomberg · Getty
The Worldwide Financial Fund’s (IMF) headquarters are within the coronary heart of Washington, a stone’s throw from the White Home, Lincoln Memorial, Treasury Division, Organisation of American States (OAS) and Federal Reserve (the Fed), in addition to the State Division, World Financial institution and Victims of Communism Museum.
The IMF was established after the second world warfare, similtaneously the World Financial institution, with the intention of making certain that worldwide financial imbalances didn’t result in new conflicts. It initially had a twin mission: coordinating financial coverage throughout postwar reconstruction and serving to international locations going through a sudden money scarcity with loans from a fund to which all its members contributed.
However over time it has became a bastion of neoliberal orthodoxy. The ‘structural changes’ it calls for in change for help — privatisation, deregulation, austerity — can have a considerable affect on the lives of individuals within the international locations involved, together with the affordability of healthcare, training and even meals. In consequence, it’s now some of the hated organisations on this planet.
‘You don’t stray from the official line’
That will clarify the IMF’s paradoxical relationship with the press. Although the IMF boasts of its ‘transparency’ and ‘openness’, I used to be warned that each one interviews can be off the file and all quotes must be authorized and even edited. The press officer recorded all of the interviews, however as one in all my interviewees glanced repeatedly on the dictaphone on the desk, I puzzled if it was there as a reminder to him or to me. After a few days, I used to be left in little question that the IMF was not underneath risk of inside rebel. Lara Merling of the Boston College’s World Improvement Coverage Middle mentioned, ‘Individuals on the IMF are very career-conscious. You don’t climb the ladder by straying from the official line.’ And most people I talked to in all probability have a vivid future.
The IMF takes excellent care of (…)
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(1) My warmest because of Dominique Plihon for his assist with this text.
(2) James Raymond Vreeland, The Worldwide Financial Fund: Politics of Conditional Lending, Routledge, New York, 2007.
(3) Mark Weisbrot, ‘The IMF has misplaced its affect’, The New York Instances, 22 September 2005.
(6) Michel Camdessus, La scène de ce drame est le monde: Treize ans à la tête du FMI (An actual-world drama: 13 years as head of the IMF), Les Arènes, Paris, 2014.
(7) See Joseph E Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, WW Norton, New York, 2002.
(8) Michel Camdessus, op cit.
(9) James Raymond Vreeland, op cit.
(10) He represented Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Panama, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Cape Verde, Nicaragua and East Timor.
(11) See Ignacio Ramonet, ‘The proper crime’, Le Monde diplomatique, English version, June 2002.
