A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, December 31, 2015
IMF’s Rogues Gallery : Crooks and Swindlers
( December 29, 2015, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) The
IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is
to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans
linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth.
In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western
European states and its policies have been designed to further the
expansion, domination and profits of their leading multi-national
corporations and financial institutions.
The US and European states practice a division of powers: The executive
directors of the IMF are Europeans; their counterparts in the World Bank
(WB) are from the US.
The executive directors of the IMF and WB operate in close consultation
with their governments and especially the Treasury Departments in
deciding priorities, deciding what countries will receive loans, under
what terms and how much.
The loans and terms set by the IMF are closely coordinated with the
private banking system. Once the IMF signs an agreement with a debtor
country, it is a signal for the big private banks to lend, invest and
proceed with a multiplicity of favorable financial transactions. From
the above it can be deduced that the IMF plays the role of general
command for the global financial system.
The IMF lays the groundwork for the major banks’ conquest of the financial systems of the world’s vulnerable states.
The IMF assumes the burden of doing all the dirty work through its
intervention. This includes the usurpation of sovereignty, the demand
for privatization and reduction of social expenditures, salaries, wages
and pensions, as well as ensuring the priority of debt payments. The IMF
acts as the ‘blind’ for the big banks by deflecting political critics
and social unrest.
Executive Directors as Hatchet Persons
What kind of persons do the banks support as executive directors of the
IMF? Whom do they entrust with the task of violating the sovereign
rights of a country, impoverishing its people and eroding its democratic
institutions?
They have included a convicted financial swindler; the current director
is facing prosecution on charges of mishandling public funds as a
Finance minister; a rapist; an advocate of gunboat diplomacy and the
promoter of the biggest financial collapse in a country’s history.
IMF Executive Directors on Trial
The current executive director of the IMF (July 2011-2015) Christine
Lagarde is on trial in France for misappropriation of a
$400-million-dollar payoff to tycoon Bernard Tapie while she was Finance
Minister in the government of President Sarkozy.
The previous executive director (November 2007-May 2011), Dominique
Strauss-Kahn, was forced to resign after he was charged with raping a
chambermaid in a New York hotel and was later arrested and tried for
pimping in the city of Lille, France. [He was never found guilty of any
sex-related charges — DV editor]
His predecessor, Rodrigo Rato (June 2004-October 2007), was a Spanish
banker who was arrested and charged with tax evasion, concealing €27
million euros in seventy overseas banks and swindling thousands of small
investors who he convinced to put their money in a Spanish bank,
Bankia, that went bankrupt.
His predecessor a German, Horst Kohler, resigned after he stated an
unlikely verity – namely that overseas military intervention was
necessary to defend German economic interests, such as free trade
routes. It’s one thing for the IMF to act as a tool for imperial
interests; it is another for an IMF executive to speak about it
publicly!
Michel Camdessus (January 1987-February 2000) was the author of the
Washington Consensus, the doctrine that underwrote the global
neo-liberal counter-revolution. His term of office witnessed his embrace
and financing of some of the worst dictators of the time, including his
own photo-ops with Indonesian strongman and mass murderer, General
Suharto.
Under Camdessus, the IMF collaborated with Argentine President Carlos
Menem in liberalizing the economy, deregulating financial markets and
privatizing over a thousand enterprises. The crises, which ensued, led
to the worst depression in Argentine history, with over 20,000
bankruptcies, 25% unemployment and poverty rates exceeding 50% in
working class districts. Camdessus later regretted his “policy mistakes”
with regard to the Argentine’s collapse. He was never arrested or
charged with crimes against humanity.
Conclusion
The criminal behavior of the IMF executives is not an anomaly or
hindrance to their selection. On the contrary, they were selected
because they reflect the values, interests and behavior of the global
financial elite: Swindles, tax evasion, bribery, large-scale transfers
of public wealth to private accounts are the norm for the financial
establishment. These qualities fit the needs of bankers who have
confidence in dealing with their ‘mirror-image’ counterparts in the IMF.
The international financial elite needs IMF executives who have no
qualms in using double standards and who overlook gross violations of
its standard procedures. For example, the current executive director,
Christine Lagarde, lends $30 billion to the puppet regime in the
Ukraine, even though the financial press describes in great detail how
corrupt oligarchs have stolen billions with the complicity of the
political class.1 The same Lagarde changes the rules on debt repayment
allowing the Ukraine to default on its payment of its sovereign debt to
Russia. The same Lagarde insists that the center-right Greek government
further reduce pensions in Greece below the poverty level, provoking the
otherwise accommodating regime of Alexis Tsipras to call for the IMF to
stay out of the bailout.2
Clearly the savage cut in living standards, which the IMF executives
decree everywhere is not unrelated to their felonious personal history.
Rapists, swindlers, militarists, are just the right people to direct an
institution as it impoverishes the 99% and enriches the 1% of the
super-rich.
References;
Financial Times, 12/21/15, p. 7.
Financial Times, 12/21/15, p.1.
Financial Times, 12/21/15, p. 7.
Financial Times, 12/21/15, p.1.
James Petras is author of Extractive Imperialism in the Americas:
Capitalism’s New Frontier (with Henry Veltmeyer) and The Politics of
Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East. Read other articles by
James, visit James’s website.