Johann Hari wrote a superb article about this venal extension of the mafioso banking cartel recently.
No surprise at all that the IMF would support the Uk's coalition government in a policy of austerity that is part of a transfer of wealth to bankers and the wealthiest 1%.
The IMF is a special purpose organisation whose purpose is to act as an enforcer and a loan shark on behalf of the global banking cartel.
Johann took us around the globe to remember some of the IMF's greatest hits - in an unbroken record of bullying soverign governments to hand over assets and GDP to bankers and financial institutions.
We start of in Malawi which at the time was suffering from an Aids epidemic and a drought.
"It ordered Malawi to sell off almost everything the state owned, and to slash spending on the population. It demanded Malawi stop subsidising fertiliser, even though it was the only thing that made it possible for farmers - most of the population - to grow anything. It told the country to prioritise giving money to international bankers over giving money to the Malawian people.
So when in 2001 the IMF found out the Malawian Government had built up large stockpiles of grain in case there was a crop failure, it ordered them to sell it off to private companies at once. The IMF told Malawi to get its priorities straight by using the proceeds to pay off a loan from a large bank, which the fund had told it to take out in the first place, at a 56 per cent annual rate of interest. Malawi's President protested and said this was dangerous. But he had little choice. The grain was sold.
The banks were paid. The next year, the crops failed. The Malawian Government had almost nothing to hand out. The starving population was reduced to eating the bark off the trees, and any rats they could capture. The BBC described it as Malawi's "worst ever famine".
So the good news was that deserving causes like bankers and financial speculators were paid - and the bad news was that at least 1,000 innocent people starved to death. ActionAid, the leading provider of help on the ground, conducted an autopsy into the famine. It concluded that the IMF "bears responsibility for the disaster".
On to Hungary:
"After the 2008 crash, the IMF lauded it for keeping to its deficit target by slashing public services. The Hungarian people responded by kicking the Government out and choosing a party that promised to make the banks pay for the crisis they had created. It introduced a 0.7 per cent levy on the banks. The IMF went crazy. It shrieked that it would cause the banks to flee from the country.
The IMF shut down its entire Hungary programme to intimidate them. But the collapse predicted by the IMF didn't happen. Hungary kept pursuing sensible moderate measures, instead of punishing the population. It imposed taxes on retail, energy and telecoms, and took funds from private pensions to pay the deficit. The IMF shrieked at every step, and demanded cuts for ordinary Hungarians instead. It's the same old agenda, with the same old threats, imposed from El Salvador to Pakistan to Ethiopia"
In an article in The Guardian, Flavia Dzodan laments the well known struggle between her nation and the debt lords at the IMF.
"Yes, our resources were depleted and our youth deprived of basic healthcare and education as a result of measures that benefited the international financial industry"
Sound familiar?
As the head of the IMF was arrested on rape allegations recently (and his touted replacement is now mired in a judical probe around allegations of abuse of power) she reflected:
"Suddenly, the gruesome tabloid metaphors of my childhood no longer refer to economic measures inflicted by an institution that responds to international, neocolonial financial interests. They acquire a more tangible, grave tone."
and this article written after the death of Néstor Kirchner an argentine president who defied the IMF remembers...
"One major challenge came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF had been instrumental in bringing about the collapse – by supporting, among other bad policies, an overvalued exchange rate with ever-increasing indebtedness at rising interest rates. But when Argentina's economy inevitably collapsed, the IMF offered no help, just a series of conditions that would impede the economy's recovery. The IMF was trying to get a better deal for the foreign creditor. Kirchner rightly refused its conditions"
So once again the IMF demands that a nation runs its economy for the benefit of bankers and speculators.
Then when this inevitably delivers the country into an economic crisis - the IMF is on hand with baseball bats to impose loans that would have made the mafia look generous.
Now the IMF roadshow has come to Europe - why? Well the 2008 financial crisis that was wholly the fault of the global gambling cartel of banks and financial institutions has plunged many nations into a fiscal crisis - not least because nations all over Europe including the UK & Ireland had no choice but to bail out the private monopoly suppliers of their own money supply . The IMF has swiftly stepped in to enforce its traditional role of thug and mugger and maintain and worsen the status quo.
When debt bubbles created by Fractional Reserve Banking and deregulated financial markets burst and banks fail - those who make and gamble fortunes on those bubbles want assurances that they will continue to be paid. As these same banks supply us with all our own money, soverign nations have little option but to submit.The IMF has demanded 'unrelenting reforms' across europe which in practice will mean - the status quo for banks (and a green light to build new fortunes with debt) and austerity for the hard working people of nations.
As always the IMF is screaming that public services be slashed, wages for sector workers cut, taxes increased and more and more money turned over to banks. The IMF only wobbles about trifles like poverty and unemployment if it thinks it might affect the ability of a nation to hand over money to financial institutions - if we can all be bullied into working harder for less then that's just fine.
Small wonder then that the IMF backs Osborne's plans to drag the UK economy out of the bank created recession by implementing austerity across the nation! What a suprise!
Osborne is happy to do the banks bidding as the revolving door between the westminister and the city means that he will soon be (offcially) on the pay roll.
The government of this country has been captured by the financial services industry and will provide no protection against the gangster demands of the IMF - working on behalf of the banks.
The government would insult our intelligence by having us believe that 'we are all in it together' - we disagree here at SH.
THEY are all in it together - bankers, 'regulators', politicans and financial speculators - laughing all the way to the bank - with mega salaries and mega bonuses.
WE - the ordinary working people of the world are in the shit.
Stand by for inflation to rise, interest rates to go up, a wave of house re-possesions, a house price collapse and of course..,. another bank bailout -- paid for by us.
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