[PEN-L:6278] IMF: 'Loans' and Conditions (was Re: Happy Days Are Here Again)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Doug to Max:
>>The principal problem with the IMF is the conditions it attaches
>>to loans.
>
>But that's their raison d'etre! It's like saying the problem with
>bloodletting is the overuse of leeches.

Now the IMF doesn't even make a gesture of 'making a loan'; it merely
imposes conditions. For instance:

*****  Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
April 29, 1999, Thursday, Final Edition
SECTION: FINANCIAL; Pg. E01
HEADLINE: IMF Ready To Resume Russia Aid; $4.5 Billion Loan Tied to Reforms
BYLINE: Paul Blustein, Washington Post Staff Writer

....Moreover, the IMF loan is structured as a virtual "bookkeeping
operation" in which money would barely flow through Russian hands before
being sent safely back to IMF headquarters in Washington. Of the $ 4.5
billion the IMF intends to lend over the next 18 months, $ 3 billion is to
be disbursed in the first year, meaning that Russia will receive less from
the IMF than it owes to the IMF during the term of the loan, according to
officials familiar with the arrangement. To pay the full amount that it
owes to the IMF, Moscow would have to use some other reserves of foreign
currencies that it holds....  *****

Workers in the Third World have been reduced to the conditions under which
they have to pay to earn the privilege of working in the capitalist world
market (in Russia, without regular payments of wages). This is not even
free wage labor. Nay, it's worse than slavery.

Yoshie