english
nederlands
Indymedia NL
Independent Media Centre of the Netherlands
Indymedia NL is an independent free communication organisation. Indymedia offers an alternative approach to the news by using an open publishing method for text, images, video and audio.
> contact > search > archive > help > join > publish news > open newswire > disclaimer > chat
Search

 
All Words
Any Word
Contains Media:
Only images
Only video
Only audio

Dossiers
Agenda
CHAT!
LINKS

European NewsReal

MDI's complaint against Indymedia.nl
Courtcase Deutsche Bahn vs. Indymedia.nl
Topics
anti-fascisme / racisme
europa
feminisme
gentechnologie
globalisering
kunst, cultuur en muziek
media
militarisme
natuur, dier en mens
oranje
vrijheid, repressie & mensenrechten
wereldcrisis
wonen/kraken
zonder rubriek
Events
G8
Oaxaca
Schinveld
Schoonmakers-Campagne
Help
Tips for newbies
A short intro into Indymedia NL
The policy of Indymedia NL
How to join?
Donate
Support Indymedia NL with donations!
Lawsuits cost a lot of money, we appreciate every (euro)cent you can spare!

You can also direct your donation to Dutch bank account 94.32.153 on behalf of Stichting Vrienden van Indymedia, Amsterdam (IBAN: NL41 PSTB 0009 4321 53)
Indymedia Network

www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa
ambazonia
canarias
estrecho / madiaq
kenya
nigeria
south africa

Canada
hamilton
london, ontario
maritimes
montreal
ontario
ottawa
quebec
thunder bay
vancouver
victoria
windsor
winnipeg

East Asia
burma
jakarta
japan
manila
qc

Europe
alacant
andorra
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
bristol
bulgaria
croatia
cyprus
estrecho / madiaq
euskal herria
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
lille
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
netherlands
nice
norway
oost-vlaanderen
paris/île-de-france
poland
portugal
romania
russia
scotland
sverige
switzerland
thessaloniki
toulouse
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia
west vlaanderen

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
brasil
chiapas
chile
chile sur
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso

Oceania
adelaide
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
oceania
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india
mumbai

United States
arizona
arkansas
atlanta
austin
baltimore
big muddy
binghamton
boston
buffalo
charlottesville
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
danbury, ct
dc
hampton roads, va
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
idaho
ithaca
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
omaha
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
seattle
tallahassee-red hills
tampa bay
tennessee
united states
urbana-champaign
utah
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
armenia
beirut
israel
palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
discussion
fbi/legal updates
indymedia faq
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech
volunteer
Credits
This site is produced by volunteers using free software where possible.

The system we use is available from:mir.indymedia.de
an alternative is available from: active.org.au/doc

Thanks to indymedia.de and mir-coders for creating and sharing mir!

Contact:
info @ indymedia.nl
Bolivia and Argentina in flames--IMF to blame
Greg Palast / Mark Metzelaar - 21.02.2003 23:57

This report from Greg Palast is about how the IMF DESTROYED economies like Bolivia and Argentine INSTEAD of helping them.
Greg shows in what way they did this.


This story form Greg Palast is ment for reproduction (so no copyright violation for Indymedia rules):

Bolivia is in flames, its economy shot dead. And I've got my hands on the murder weapon, the same one that killed Argentina's economy: the "Country Assistance Strategies" of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). They are marked confidential. How I got them-well, that's not important. But this is-from this month's Harper's Magazine, my exposé of a batch of these secretive plans for the seizure, control and
ultimate ruin of the nations the IMF supposedly seeks to save.
Resolved to Ruin, by Greg Palast, Harper's Magazine, March 2003.

Green-haired protesters in the streets of Seattle were ridiculed for their belief that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the world's finance ministers enter into secret agreements to impoverish
developing nations.
************************************************************************************************
See the March edition of
 http://www.harpers.org
Harper's Magazine for the complete
annotated document, based on Chapter 4 of the new US edition of The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy, out February 25th from Plume/Penguin.
************************************************************************************************Here, in fact, is one such agreement: Argentina's "Country Assistance Strategy Progress Report" from June 2001. This document, nominally produced by the World Bank, represents the interlocking directives of both the Bank and the IMF, as well as, indirectly, the wishes of both institutions' largest patron, the United States Treasury Department. Marked "Confidential" or "Official Use Only," these reports are seldom publicized to the citizenry bound up in their stipulations. And yet for the 100-plus that rely on IMF and World Bank loans-countries such as Argentina, Tanzania,
Ecuador, Sierra Leone-such agreements serve as de facto legislation, meticulous in detail and ideological in thrust. Although couched as loan conditions or as helpful development advice, these reports more closely resemble the minutes of a financial coup d'etat....

To reduce its deficit per IMF decree, Argentina had cut $3 billion from government spending-a cut that was necessary, the authors note here, to "accomodat[e] the increase in interest obligations." These obligations, the report did not need to add, were largely to foreign creditors, including the IMF and World Bank themselves. Since 1994, in fact, Argentina's budget deficits had been entirely attributable to interest payments on foreign loans. Excluding such payments, spending had remained constant at 19 percent of GDP. Despite the visible harm caused by cuts, the new plan ordered more. This, the report promised, would "greatly improve the outlook for the remainder of 2001 and 2002, with growth expected to
recover in the later half of 2001." The Bank was slightly off the mark.
By December 2001, Buenos Aires' middle class, unaccustomed to hunting the streets for garbage to eat, joined the poor in mass demonstrations.

How had Argentina arrived at such an impasse? In the 1990s the nation was the poster child for globalization, having followed without question the IMF and World Bank program. The "reform" plan for Argentina, as for every nation, has four steps. The first of these, capital market
liberalization, was achieved by 1991's "Convertibility Plan," which pegged
the Argentine peso in a one-to-one relationship with the U.S. dollar.
This peg was designed both to keep inflation low and to make deficit spending difficult, in hopes of attracting and comforting foreign investors.
Liberalized markets free capital to flow in and out across borders. But once Argentina's economy began to wobble, money simply flowed out....

The second step in the IMF/World Bank regimen is privatization. Both at the urging of lenders and out of financial necessity, Argentina throughout the nineties sold off what Argentines now ruefully call "las joyas
de mi abuela," grandmother's jewels: the state's oil, gas, water, and electric companies and the state banks. It was quite a fire sale.
Vivendi of France won rural water systems; Enron of Texas the pipes of Buenos Aires; Fleet of Boston took the provincial banks....

In 1994, at the World Bank's urging, Argentina partially privatized even its social security system, diverting much of it into private accounts. The U.S.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research calculated
the revenue loss from this decision alone to be almost equal to the nation's budget deficit during the period.

The third prong of the laissez-faire putsch is market-based pricing. In Argentina, the main target of this initiative has been labor, that most inflexible of commodities. "A major advance was made to eliminate outdated labor contracts," states this report, noting approvingly that
"labor costs" (i.e., wages) had fallen due to "labor market flexibility induced by the de facto liberalization of the market via increased informality." Translation: workers who lost unionized jobs were forced into ad
hoc arrangements, with far less protection. Here, the report asks the government to decentralize collective bargaining, a move that would reduce union power….

Far from achieving this goal of "unemployment in single digits," the
World Bank and IMF saw the jobless figure in the Buenos Aires area rise from 17 percent to a staggering 22 percent in the year after the report's issuance. The violence and looting that rocked that rocked the city
in December 2001 thus represents a stage in the "austerity" process that Stiglitz terms the "IMF riot." When a nation, he said, "is down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of
them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up."....

Step four of the IMF/World Bank program is free trade. The loan terms of the two institutions had required Argentina to accept "an open trade policy." As recession set in, Argentina's exporters-whose products were effectively priced, via the peg, in U.S. dollars-were forced into a spectacularly unequal competition against Brazilian goods priced in that nation's devalued currency. Argentina grows a special kind of long-grain rice favored by Brazilians, and yet even as Brazil faced a hunger crisis tons of rice went unsold....

Before 1980, when the World Bank and IMF set out to rearrange the economies of developing nations, nearly all of them adhered to Keynesianism or socialism. Following the "import-substitution model," they build
locally owned industry through government investment, behind a protective wall of tariffs and capital controls. In those supposed economic dark ages, spanning roughly from 1960 to 1980, per-capita in-come grew by 73 percent in Latin America and by 34 percent in Africa. By comparison,
since 1980, Latin American income growth has slowed to a virtual halt-to less than 6 percent over twenty years-while African incomes have declined by 23 percent. The IMF itself, in a statement accompanying its April 2000 "World Economic Outlook" report, noted that "in recent decades, too many countries, and nearly one-fifth of the world population, have regressed… This is arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the
20th Century." On this, at least, the IMF had it right.

To view two of these documents
 http://www.gregpalast.com/argentina2.jpg
and
 http://www.gregpalast.com/harpers1.jpg

On February 25, Plume/Penguin USA will release the new, expanded American edition of Greg Palast's New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth About Globalization, Corporate Cons and High-Finance Fraudsters. You can view Palast's reports for BBC Television's Newsnight and his columns for the Guardian papers of London at www.gregpalast.com.
 
supplements
> indymedia.nl > search > archive > help > join > publish news > open newswire > disclaimer > chat
DISCLAIMER: Indymedia NL uses the 'open posting' principle to promote freedom of speech. The news (text, images, audio and video) posted in the open newswire of Indymedia NL remains the property of the author who posted it. The views in these postings do not necesseraly reflect the views of the editorial team of Indymedia NL. Furthermore, it is not always possible to guarantee the accuracy of the postings.