From The Ramparts

Making Mafia Loan Sharks Look Like Choir Boys

Making Mafia Loan Sharks Look Like Choir Boys

“When the Bank and the Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called ‘structural adjustment policies ’These policies—or SAPs, as they are sometimes called—require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank have shined a harsh spotlight on the way the institutions put the interests of wealthy corporations in the developed world above the interests of the planet's poor majority. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education. They mean focusing resources on growing export crops for industrial countries rather than supporting family farms and growing food for local communities. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction. ” http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/

The World Bank and IMF are the world’s largest lending institutions, they dole out billions to debtor nations all around the world. However, don’t mistake their openhandedness with altruism or good neighborliness. These globalists in pin stripped suits make the Mafia and Cosa Nostra look like bungling Keystone Kops when it comes to predatory terms of the loans, interest collection and setting the table for future business. The World Bank and IMF were founded after WWII. Now they work hand in hand with the former colonizer nations of Europe, AmeriKKKa and Japan to fleece and plunder Third World nations under the guise of aid and assistance. Most recently they concocted a PR scam whereby they touted debt relief for Africa knowing all the while they planned no such thing. Relief from their stranglehold is not their MO. In fact their MO is more criminal, more sinister and more ruthless than any two bit loan shark. Both the International Monetary Fund and World Bank make major loans to “developing countries” throughout the world. Of course they do so to make a profit for their investors, the member nations who just coincidentally happen to be colonial powers, including the Untied States and Japan. The World bank and IMF are economic hit men for the former colonial powers who are still very much in the business of neoliberal colonialism. The World Bank, the IMF and US-AID make the loans knowing full well they have the militaries of France, Britain and the US to make sure the debtors repay the debt service (the loans are so exorbitant and the conditions placed on them are so egregious, they know most countries won’t be able to pay them off so the IMF and World Bank make their money on the interest and debts service of the loans). The military also makes sure the leaders who negotiated the loans don’t deviate from the stultifying conditions the IMF and World Bank have saddled them with. It’s a con game. They make the Mafia look like boy scouts. At least if you fail to make the payment to the neighborhood loan shark they only break a leg. If you fail to make a payment to the IMF or World Bank or renege on the conditions of the loan, they gut your whole economy or they send in the US Special Forces or Marines to exact their pound of flesh from your whole population. But they really don’t want the loan paid off. What they want is the debtor nation to open up their country’s natural l resources and infrastructure for pillage and plunder by the banks and multi-national corporations which are in cahoots with the IMF, World Bank and US-AID.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wbimf/TopTenIMF.html in an article entitled Top Ten Reasons To Oppose the IMF states in effect the IMF is a nefarious organization that means no good to the people of the world. “Since the debt crisis of the 1980's, the IMF has assumed the role of bailing out countries during financial crises (caused in large part by currency speculation in the global casino economy) with emergency loan packages tied to certain conditions, often referred to as structural adjustment policies (SAPs). The IMF now acts like a global loan shark, exerting enormous leverage over the economies of more than 60 countries. These countries have to follow the IMF's policies to get loans, international assistance, and even debt relief. Thus, the IMF decides how much debtor countries can spend on education, health care, and environmental protection. The IMF is one of the most powerful institutions on Earth -- yet few know how it works.” In reason number three they say, “Unlike the path historically followed by the industrialized countries, the IMF forces countries from the Global South to prioritize export production over the development of diversified domestic economies. Nearly 80 percent of all malnourished children in the developing world live in countries where farmers have been forced to shift from food production for local consumption to the production of export crops destined for wealthy countries. The IMF also requires countries to eliminate assistance to domestic industries while providing benefits for multinational corporations -- such as forcibly lowering labor costs. Small businesses and farmers can't compete. Sweatshop workers in free trade zones set up by the IMF and World Bank earn starvation wages, live in deplorable conditions, and are unable to provide for their families. The cycle of poverty is perpetuated, not eliminated, as governments' debt to the IMF grows.” And on and on. When we look at Africa and Latin America and we see the rampant poverty, malnutrition, cash crop exploitation of the land and workers, the siphoning off of natural resources and the privatization of utilities this is due to IMF and World bank policies! These Wall Street gangsters make the Mafia look like rosy cheeked choirboys.

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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 11:18 AM