The history in general of
international financial institutions (IFIs)

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The history in general of international finance

Building Strategies on the International Financial Institutions

By Marcos Arruda, Institute of Alternative Policies for the Southern Cone of Latin America, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 25 October 1995. The intent of this paper is to share reflections about NGO strategies and tactics based on what I have learned from those organizations and networks.

The IMF and the World Bank: protectors of capitalism

By Daniel Vila, People’s Weekly World, 17 January 1998. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank impose humiliating conditions on poor countries before lending them money. Most countries accept the loans because they have no other way of avoiding total financial collapse. Origins of the Bretton Woods/Breton Woods institutions. The neoliberal conditionalities. The majority of counties do not benefit from intervention.

Drive for the New World Financial Organization

By Lazar Bloch, IPS, 28 July 1998. Some developing nations and UN officials are pushing for the creation of a new World Financial Organisation (WFO) to protect developing nations and provide global economic stability through regulatory action. It would help to fill up the gap in the existing structure of the financial system by monitoring and regulating private capital flows.

Heads should roll at IMF and World Bank: Neither Camdessus nor Wolfensohn are the men to lead independent institutions that do not favour private capital

By Anthony Rowley, Singapore Business Times, 13 October 1998. The capital market-led development paradigm which the IMF has endorsed under Camdessus, and which its sister institution the World Bank has actively promoted under its president James Wolfensohn, is crumbling around both men’s ears.

Social Policy Guidelines are the Missing Block in the New International Financial Architecture, declares Camdessus

ICFTU ONLINE..., 22 April 1999. Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the IMF said that social concerns should be at the heart of efforts to construct a new financial architecture to manage and avert financial crises. Trade unions need to lobby their governments to ensure that a strong social dimension informs the new international architecture.

Bigger voices join opposition to ‘law of the jungle’

By Abid Aslam, IPS, Asia Times, 2 October 1999. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank wound up their annual meetings Thursday amid renewed resistance to rapid investment liberalization and a global economic agenda seen as dominated by rich countries. The law of the jungle must be abandoned.

IMF And The World Bank—Friend Or Foe?

By Anthony Stoppard, IPS, 18 September 2000. The push for IMF and WB reform and for the IMF board to be made more representative of Africa. The Group of Seven (G7) have a share holding and vote of just less than half, while 43 African countries have less than five percent voice in the institution.

Helping The Poorest To Get Poorer; The World Bank and the IMF are beyond reform. Shut them down

By George Monbiot, Guardian (London), 21 September 2000. The WB and IMF may insist that they are now the best friends of the poor; structural adjustment—forcing all countries to accept the same neoliberal prescriptions— is gone; instead debtor nations will now be allowed to devise their own poverty-reduction strategies—as long as it’s neoliberalism.

The Spectator: Mother Mary

By Roy Clarke, Post of Zambia (Lusaka), 28 December 2000. A satire of the Breton Woods institutions, in which they are pilloried as heartless.

Against the Workers; How IMF and World Bank Policies Undermine Labor Power and Rights

By Vincent Lloyd and Robert Weissman, The Multinational monitor, September 2001. After a decade of IMF and WB economic reform, Argentina has plunged into a desperate economic crisis. Here as in dozens of other countries, labor flexibility was a loan condition. Loan conditionalities directly undermine labor rights, labor power and tens of millions of workers’ standard of living.

Today’s winner of the Nobel Prize in economics

By Greg Palast, The Observer (London), 10 October 2001. The World Banks former Chief Economist, Joseph Stiglitz’ accusations are eye-popping—including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections. Instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was excluded from the meetings. Stiglitz was fired for having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.

IMF vs. Stiglitz (and WB): open warfare

By Soren Ambrose, 50 Years Is Enough Network, Washington, DC USA, [3 July 2002]. It would seem that open warfare has broken out between the IMF and World Bank, or at least between the IMF and Joseph Stiglitz. The IMF has clearly decided that it must go on the offensive to counter Stiglitzs charges in his new book, Globalization & Its Discontents. Two related news items and an interview.

IMF, World Bank Short on Global Solutions

By Paul Blustein, Washington Post, Monday 30 September 2002. The high command of the global economy glided with ease through the weekend’s meetings as antiglobalization demonstrations proved unexpectedly punchless. However, they had to grapple with some serious threats menacing the world economy—and they offered scant evidence that they are prepared to dispense with them.