No. The real idea is not to benefit any country and their development. At most, like queermunist said, the compradores can take some of that money to keep the explotation-repression going for the interest of the countries we all know and hate (pensá en el Toto Caputo).
Citing the resignation letter of a former IMF senior economist, Davison L. Budhoo:
Today I resigned from the staff of the International Monetary Fund after over twelve years, and after 1000 days of official Fund work in the field, hawking your medicine and your bag of tricks to governments and to peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa. To me resignation is a priceless liberation, for with it I have taken the first big step to that place where I may hope to wash my hands of what in my mind's eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples. Mr. Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers. It dries up too; it cakes all over me; sometimes I feel that there is not enough soap in the whole world to cleanse me from the things that I did do in your name and in the names of your predecessors, and under your official seal.You know, when all the evidence is in, there are two types of questions that you and me and others like us will have to answer. The first is this: - will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellow men condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?
Wow, powerful stuff, truly has a way with words. A moment of silence is needed after that one.
Okay now face the wall.
Very online.
Our policy towards prisoners captured from the Japanese, puppet or anti-Communist troops is to set them all free, except for those who have incurred the bitter hatred of the masses and must receive capital punishment and whose death sentence has been approved by the higher authorities. Among the prisoners, those who were coerced into joining the reactionary forces but who are more or less inclined towards the revolution should be won over in large numbers to work for our army. The rest should be released and, if they fight us and are captured again, should again be set free. We should not insult them, take away their personal effects or try to exact recant taxation from them, but without exception should treat them sincerely and kindly. This should be our policy, however reactionary they may be. It is a very effective way of isolating the camp of reaction.
I get what you’re saying, and if we’re actually going to discuss this that’s fine, but this dude worked for the IMF for 12 years and admits in his own words that he has blood on his hands. Reeducation is the most likely punishment.
I'm very torn. On one hand, this model of forgiveness is truly saint-like. I remember having an intense conversation about Puyi (China's last emperor, and subsequently a Japanese puppet ruler) and how the people ultimately forgave him. I might try to dig it up later.
On the other hand, the precious garden that is Earth is being deconstructed down to its component chemicals in order to make a handful of people extremely rich along the way. There is no word that can properly encapsulate the crime being perpetrated against all present and future life. Ecocide? Omnicide? It will make the horrors of the previous century into a mere prologue for what is to come. Everyone who is aiding and abetting this cosmic crime deserves the most savage punishments that the human mind can dream up, and it still wouldn't atone for a fraction of the misery they're working so diligently to create. And as much as I'd like to appeal to my own better nature, I simply can't convince myself otherwise.
There is no word that can properly encapsulate the crime being perpetrated against all present and future life. Ecocide? Omnicide?
The priority isn't getting justice for this; the priority is stopping it. Often (and I think this is why Mao's sentiment is echoed in a bunch of other revolutionary writings) the quickest way to stop the harm is to give the perpetrators a way out. If you tell people you'll kill them whether they fight or surrender, what are they going to pick?
The compradores that underdevelop their own countries for personal gain. Personal enrichment, all it costs is sovereignty.
Yes, yes, I know that all too well, I was thinking of country as a whole, I'll update the title, sorry
The aim of the loan is to indebt Argentina so much that its currency will continue to go down and down and down, essentially wrecking the economy. That’s what the IMF does. That’s its business plan. It makes a loan to subsidize capital flight, emptying out the economy of cash, leading the currency to collapse, as it is recently collapsed. As soon as the $50 billion was expended, or wasted, in letting wealthy Argentinians take their pesos, convert them into dollars, move them offshore to the United States, to England, to the Dutch West Indies, and offshore banking centers. Then they let the currency collapse so that the IMF model, which it’s announced for the last 50 years, the model is if you can depreciate a currency what you’re really lowering is the price of labor.
The right wing Chicago School propagandists keep claiming that if a country’s сurrency is depreciating, it must be because its prices are going up. But that gets the line of causality inside out. For debtor countries such as Argentina or other Lаtin American countries, the balance of payments has little to dо with domestic prices, domestic wage rates or domestic cost of production. The balance-of payments – and hence, the exchange rate – is swamped by debt sеrvice.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/07/michael-hudson-argentinas-new-50-billion-imf-loan-designed-replay-2001-crisis.html
I read this in Michael Hudsons voice, then saw in the link that it was a quote from him, lol.
It’s definitely well worth the time to read Hudsons analysis if anyone finds this stuff interesting and wants to learn more.
Depends on your definition of benefitted. If you're definition is just "GDP line goes up" and ignore everything else then I'm sure there's some "success stories"
yeah it's like you get currency to "stabilize the markets" and "restore faith in the economy" and maybe some infrastructure projects that benefit resource extraction but you have to make your water distribution system for-profit
The Tokaido Shinkansen, the first high-speed railway in the world, was partially funded by loans from the World Bank. Link in Japanese here.
Oh whoops that was the World Bank not the IMF, my bad.
