May 27 - 29, 2011
Alexander Cockburn
America's Top Hypocrites
Michael Hudson
Breakup of the Eurozone?
Mike Whitney
Save the Economy, Hike the Deficit!
Patrick Cockburn
Can a Tomb Bring Egyptian Tourism Back to Life?
Esam Al-Amin
A Disgusting Lovefest
Peter Lee
Distorting the Syrian Uprising With the Help of the (UK) Independent
Conn Hallinan
The New Face of War
M. Reza Pirbhai
The Trust Deficit: US / Pakistani Relations
David Rosen
Arnold's Decade of Deceit
Saul Landau /
Nelson Valdés
Cuba: Facts and Realities
Ramzy Baroud
Welcome to Gaza
Ira Chernus
The Middle East Through the Looking Glass
Yasmin Qureshi
The Militarization of India
Marshall Auerback
Crisis in the Eurozone
Thomas H. Naylor
Greed, Glitz and Gluttony
Jake Rohrer
When the Bad Moon Rose: a Memoir of the Rise and Fall of CCR by Their Manager
Curtis Doebbler
Equity and Justice for Whom?
Linn Washington, Jr.
Too Big to Do Time?
Ron Jacobs
Falsehoods on Freedom
Boris Kagarlitsky
A Warning From Finland
Eric Walberg
On the Russian Fronts
David Bacon
The Hidden History of Mexico / US Labor Solidarity
Clancy Sigal
Love Child
Michael Winship
Democracy Talks: Listen Up!
Sam Smith
Factories of Fame
Missy Beattie
Our Burning World
David Ker Thomson
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
John Shakour
I am Done With Voting
Farzana Versey
Oprah's Divine Comedy
Dave Lindorff
On the Death of Soren, a Favourite Cat
Don Monkerud
Shine On You Crazy Diamond
Charles R. Larson
Communism as Comedy
Kim Nicolini
Scenes From the Mundane Life of a Drunk
David Yearsley
What Lurks Around the Corner of Disney's "Prom"
Poets' Basement
Four by Preston Hood
Website of the Weekend
Ze Claudio Ribeiro: TED Amazonia
May 26, 2011
Uri Avnery
Bibi and the Yo-Yos
Peter Weiss
Torture and the Damage Done
Afshin Rattansi
The BBC's New Censors
Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Times Ten: Fukushima and the Radioactive Sea
Mike Whitney
En Garde, Legarde!
Tanya Golash-Boza
The Politics of Law-Breaking
Sam Husseini
See No Evil: the Absurd US Stance on Israeli Nukes
Norman Solomon
The Search for War
Sherwood Ross
Just Another Day in the Incarceration Society
Anthony Papa
The Case of Mariem Megalla: Another NYPD Cover Up?
Website of the Day
DC Cops Slam Down Paraplegic
May 25, 2011
Michael Neumann
General Amidror's
Gift
Yvonne Ridley
The Case of Detainee U
Christine Ahn /
Kavita N. Ramdas
The IMF: Violating Women Since 1945
Dilip Hiro
The Cards in Pakistan's Deck
Dean Baker
The Housemaid, Her Union and Strauss-Kahn
John Grant
Inside Philly's Veterans Court
Brian Tierney
Another Breitbart Hit Job: Attacking the Memory of Workers' Struggle
Patrick Cockburn
Mubarak in the Dock
Murray Dobbin
Harper's Goal: Create an Irrational Reality
Thomas Mountain
UN Cuts Food, Expands War in Somalia
Website of the Day
US in Denial on Israeli Nukes
May 24, 2011
Lawrence Wittner
The Global Arms Bazaar
Bill Quigley
The Resistance in Obama Time: Over 2,600 Activists Arrested in US Since Election
Cynthia McKinney
NATO's Feast of Blood: Dispatch From Tripoli
Mike Whitney
Greece in Meltdown
Ralph Nader
Revitalizing the AFL-CIO
Neve Gordon
Netanyahu and the One-State Solution
Paul Fitzgerald / Elizabeth Gould
Crossing Bones at Zero Line
Patrick Cockburn
Church Burning in Egypt
Alvaro Huerta
Obama's Big Immigration Speech: Much Ado About Nothing
Patrick Bond
Obama the Minimalist
Robert Roth
Fukushima Goes Global
Sam Smith
The Autistic Confederacy
Website of the Day
Happy 70th, Bob!
May 23, 2011
Heather Gray
Was the American Revolution Fought to Save Slavery?
Patrick Cockburn
What NATO is Doing to Libya
John Mearsheimer
Obama and the Iron Cage
Vijay Prashad
The World We Want is the World We Need
Fidel Castro
Will NATO Bomb Spain?
Rebecca Solnit
When Worlds Collide in a Luxury Suite
Daniel Drennan
Words From the First Intifada
Mark Weisbrot
Less Than Meets the Eye: Strauss-Kahn's Legacy at the IMF
Sherwood Ross
The Crisis in America's Ghettos
Tom H. Hastings
Imperial Clients: Stop All Military Aid
Website of the Day
Geoffrey O'Brien on Duke Ellington
May 20 - 22, 2011
Alexander Cockburn
Was DSK Stitched Up?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Let Us Now Praise Infamous Animals
Mike Gravel
My Political Rupture With AIPAC
Gideon Levy
How Obama Demolished Palestinian Chances for Statehood
Saul Landau
Who's the Next Enemy?
Jordan Flaherty
High Water Anxiety
Colin Murphy
Peirce for the Defense: 30 Years Fighting Govt. Terrorism Cases
Peter Lee
Tibet's Last Hope?
Rev. Jesse Jackson
What Changed in the Arab Spring
David Macaray
Massey's Death Traps
Andrew Levine
Obama's "Original Sin" Against Morality
Dean Baker
Can the Greek People Teach the Central Bankers Economics?
Michael Uhl
The Spat-Upon Vet Revisited
Ramzy Baroud
Unity is Not Compromise
Harvey Wasserman Nuclear Rapture? Fukushima's Apocalyptic Threat
Mark Chmiel
Two Holocaust Survivors: a Reflection on Elie Wiesel and Hedy Epstein
David Zlutnick
Hope in Afghanistan? An Interview with Malalai Joya
Russell Mokhiber
Beyond the Law
Medea Benjamin / Charles Davis
Obama's Hollow Platitudes on the Middle East
Ron Jacobs
These Tales of Constant Sorrow
Norman Girvan
The Future of the Caribbean
Josh Eidelson
Labor Board Rules for Workers, Conservatives Freak Out
Richard Javad Heydarian
Arab Spring, Turkish Summer?
Sheldon Richman
After Bin Laden
Peter Certo
Blood on the Trackpads: Inside Apple's Chinese Factories
Don Fitz
Cuba's Revolutionary Dream of International Medicine
Lawrence Davidson
Criminal Criminology in Israel
David Ker Thomson
Fast Cars, Women and Five-Pound Pies
Michael Dickinson
Missing the Rapture: Confessions of a Stand-In Jesus
Missy Beattie
Going to Extremes
Farzana Versey
Masters as Slaves: Roth, Arnie, Kahn and Sexual Ageism
Bruce E. Levine
The Ten Fold Path to Political Change
Charles R. Larson
A Life of Reinvention: Manning Marable's Malcolm X
David Yearsley
The Suzuki Play Down v. the Valkyries
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Chaet
Website of the Weekend
The Spanish Revolution
May 19, 2011
Michael Teitelman
A Tale of Two Prisoners
Linn Washington
Who Ordered the Kent State Shootings? Obama Justice Dept. Refuses to Investigate New Evidence
Peter Lee
Dr. Doom and the Chinese Economy
Brian Cloughley
Destroying Democracy in Pakistan
Tanya Golash-Boza
What the Alleged Rape of a Guinean Immigrant by the Head of the IMF Tells Us About "Secure Communities"
Dean Baker
The Stimulus and Jobs
Michael Winship
The Importance of Being Tony Kushner
Charlotte Laws
The Black Swan and the Chicken: Natalie Portman's $600 Carton of Eggs
Dan Bacher
Death in the Delta
Website of the Day
A Message from Bonnie, Jackson and Graham on Nuclear Power
May 18, 2011
Jonathan Cook
Israel in a Strategic Dead End
Mike Whitney
What If the U. S. Looks Like Defaulting?
Nick Turse
Arming Despots: Obama and the Mideast Arms Trade
Carol Polsgrove
What Mitch Daniels Did to Indiana
Joseph Nevins
Scenes From an Occupation
Sherry Wolf
Le Rapist is a Socialist? Non!
John Feffer
Afghanistan Under the Knife
Alice Rothchild
Why AIPAC is Dangerous for Jews
Thomas Mountain
Did NATO Massacre Libyan Religious Leaders?
Stewart J. Lawrence
Exit Huckabee
Website of the Day
Saving Troy Davis
May 17, 2011
Diana Johnstone
Weep Not for Strauss-Kahn
Dean Baker
Strauss-Kahn and the IMF
Anthony DiMaggio
Gingrich: Born Again Loser
Wajahat Ali
The Maddening Return of Terrence Malick
Peter Van Buren
War Pundits and War Pornographers
Conn Hallinan
War Crimes and the Bombing of Libya
Murray Dobbin
The Ongoing Crime of Asbestos Exports
Shamus Cooke
The Democrats' Attack on Unions
Sonja Karkar
The Nakba: What Does It Mean in Human Terms?
Johnny Barber
Why I'm Going to Gaza
Website of the Day
Krassner Wins! Krassner Wins!
May 16, 2011
Patrick Cockburn
Anti-Shia Pogroms Sweep Bahrain
Mike Whitney
Why They Hated Dominique: Bankers Cheer as IMF Head Faces Sexual Assault Charges
Marjorie Cohn
The Responsibility to Protect
Ralph Nader
Obama and Land Mines: Indecision in the Face of Tragedy
Max B. Kantar
Without Fear: the Ballad of Alvaro Luna Hernandez
Russell Mokhiber
The Bible, the Constitution and Trial Lawyers
Jerry Elmer
Lessons From the Freedom Rides
Harry Browne
Dublin Locked Down for Visits of the Century
Franklin Lamb
Nakba Sunday at Maroun al Ras
Tanya Kerssen
Repression and Backroom Deals in Honduras
Ken Ferguson
Is Britain Heading for a Break-Up After the Latest Scottish Elections?
Harvey Wasserman
America's New Nuclear Showdown
Website of the Day
The Disappearing Face of New York City
May 13 - 15, 2011
Alexander Cockburn
Hairy-Chested Liberals Exult: Who Do We Kill Next?
Anne McClintock
Which Way Wisconsin?
Douglas Lummis
Round Up the Usual Suspects ... and Shoot Them
Esam Al-Amin
Bin Laden and the Spring of Arab Revolutions
Ghada Karmi
Obama and the Palestinians
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Green Became the Color of Money: Obama and the Man in the Hat
Allen Mendenhall
Killing Bin Laden: Dershowitz vs. Chomsky, Again
Renaud Lambert
Lobster is For Tourists Only: Cuba's New Socialism
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Con: Not Legal, Not Effective
Fred Gardner
Obama Never Promised You a Pot Garden
Jane Hirschmann
Gaza is Crumbling
Saul Landau
The Big Wedding: Osama and Obama
Dave Lindorff
Why the Democratic Party is Corporate Lickspittle
Eric Walberg
The Vicious Circle: Russia, the US and the Assassination of Bin Laden
Ramzy Baroud
Gaza Marathon
John Feffer
After Osama: China?
Michael Leonardi
Italy's Great Nuclear Swindle
Rev. William E. Alberts
The Elephants in Osama's Compound
Richard Broderick
Viva la Muerte! Mobs and Power in the USA
Kourosh Ziabari
Middle East in Flux: an Interview with Anthony DiMaggio
Geoffrey McDonald
The Cry for Jobs
John Sinclair
That Hippie Sacrament: Living Free and Outside the Mainstream
Senay Boztas
Are Amsterdam's "Open City" Days Numbered?
Missy Beattie
Examining My Head
Omar Barghouti
Catching AIPAC Off Guard
Farzana Versey
The System's Dissent
Cal Winslow
NUHW Wins in San Francisco; Plans Strike in LA
Sam Smith
Why Hip is No Longer Hip
Charles R. Larson
Korean Family Dynamics
Charles M. Young Turds in the Drink: Bill Hicks and the Place of Corporate Comedy
Randy Shields
The Good Don't Triumph and There is No Justice: DePalma's "Blow Out" Thirty Years On
David Yearsley
"Billy Elliot" at the Imperial
Poets' Basement
Three by Daniel Church
Website of the Weekend
My Water's On Fire Tonight: the Fracking Song
May 12, 2011
William O'Connor
A Former NYC Firefighter on the Death of Bin Laden
Peter Bach
Lights in the Outhouse: Scenes From Pakistan's North West Frontier
Mike Whitney
Inside the GOP's "Security Act:" Repealing Due Process, Declaring Permanent War
Dean Baker
The Best Way to Balance the Budget
Paul Craig Roberts
The West is Trapped in its Own Propaganda
Ron Jacobs
Frozen Bank Accounts and Free Speech in the US
Nick Dearden
Greece, Ireland and Portugal: Bankruptcy or Democracy?
William J. Astore
The Crash and Burn of Old Regimes
Walden Bello
Bin Laden's Game
Paul Imison
Mexico Marches for Peace
Website of the Day
The Long Con
May 11, 2011
Neve Gordon
Israel's Repressive New Laws
Gary Leupp
The Death of Bin Laden: a Scenario
John Gibler
A War of Anonymous Death
Mike Whitney
Now That's Chutzpah: Hillary Blasts China on "Human Rights"
Pierre Rimbert
Can France's Left Thinkers Escape the Ivory Tower?
Harvey Wasserman
Japan Junks New Nuclear Plants: Will Obama Follow Suit?
Alan Farago
Florida: Winning the Race to the Bottom
Mark Weisbrot
Why Greece Should Reject the Euro
Binoy Kampmark
Gloating at the Execution: Bin Laden and the Accursed Man
Murray Dobbin
Will the NDP Become the New Liberal Party?
Website of the Day
So You Say You Support Independent Journalism? You Have Four Days to Put Up or Shut Up
May 10, 2011
Mike Whitney
Countdown to Default
Anthony DiMaggio
The Ugly Reality Behind the Killing of Bin Laden
Marjorie Cohn
Assassinating Bin Laden: Why It Violated International Law
Stephen Soldz
Army Interrogators on Torture: Why It Doesn't Work
Robert Weissman
Chamber of Commerce in Wonderland
Patrick Bond
Are African Lions Really Roaring?
David Macaray
Obama and the Colombian Trade Pact
Robert Lipsyte
Why the NFL Would Do Us a Favor by Canceling the Upcoming Season
John O'Hara
From Abbottabad to Brooklyn
Thomas Mountain
Funding Genocide in the Horn of Africa
Laura Flanders
Vermont Closer to Single-Payer Health Care
Website of the Day
Turning Mexico Into a Graveyard
May 9, 2011
Gareth Porter
Dubious Hopes for Peace
Kathy Kelly
The Age of Predators
Andy Kroll
The McJobs Economy
Patrick Cockburn
Portrait of the US Press in the Hour of Its Fall
Larry Tuttle
Are Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Really Green?
Wajahat Ali
American Muslims in a Post-Bin Laden World
Uri Avnery
The Death of Bin Laden and the Future of Bin Ladenism
Larry Portis
What This Year's May Day Demostrations Told Me About France
All his tactics are dictated
By problems he himself created.
-- Auden.
A photograph from South Korea during the 1997 Asian financial crisis captured the prevailing mood about the International Monetary Fund: a white collar worker held up a sign that read, “I’M Fired.” The habits of “sound money” and “austerity” had become the Fund’s orthodoxy since the 1980s, and, as the Greeks now know, it is unchanged.
Since 2003, the Fund had become less relevant. Countries of the South had come to rely increasingly on the private sector, and to investments from the new giants, principally China (in 2005, the IMF lent just over $1 billion whereas private flows totaled $491 billion). The Fund operated as a kind of credit rating agency, giving its blessings to a country, which would then be able to borrow money from the private market. The Fund smuggled in its orthodoxy, but now no longer in the flamboyant way that it had done so in the high-days of Structural Adjustment. The appeal of China’s finance was that it came absent the IMF orthodoxy.
The apotheosis of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) was premised on his ostentatious attempt to bring the Fund back to center-stage. DSK had to deal with two major challenges to the Fund: (1) the lack of democracy in the management at the Fund, (2) the discredited ideology of the Fund. The Fund recovered its profile, but it has operated largely unchanged. That was the legacy of DSK: neoliberalism with a French accent, néolibéralisme.
Democracy at the IMF
One of the myths of the IMF is that the voting shares in the IMF’s executive board are indexed to the investment of individual countries in the Fund. Since 1968, the Fund has fully recompensed its creditors. Just after that date, the other countries began to clamor for a more democratic board. Currently, the United States has the largest bloc of votes in the board (16.80 per cent), with Japan in second (6.25 per cent). By “convention” the IMF has been headed by a European (hence the rapid consensus that the next head should be the French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde). But the Europeans do not control the IMF. In 1997, the New York Times let slip that the IMF “acts as the lapdog of the U. S. Treasury.” Because of the “consensus” system, the U. S. effectively has a veto (in 1987 and in 1991, the U. S. overruled the Fund’s attempt to strengthen conditions on loans to Mubarak’s Egypt).
After the credit crunch of 2007, the Group of 8 and the IMF pleaded with the locomotives of the Global South to put some of their surplus capital into the IMF. The BRICS states – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – complied. They put billions of dollars into the Fund, and the G8 countries shifted 6 per cent of the voting shares to them (the U. S. used to control 17.11 per cent, for instance). But even then the voting shares in the BRICS states are very limited (they total 14.18 per cent, less than the U. S. alone): Brazil (1.72 per cent), Russia (2.40 per cent), India (2.35 per cent), China (3.82 per cent) and South Africa (0.77 per cent). China now has the second largest economy in the world, and according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook for 2011, it is poised to overtake the U. S. by 2016, if not sooner.
Since the 1980s, the funds disbursed by the Fund have largely come not from the North but from the South itself. Income from debt servicing payments provided the down payment for the Fund’s disbursements. The slogan from the Global South is familiar: no taxation without representation.
Ideology at the IMF
The economic disorders provoked by IMF policy are now legion. Little divides the ill-effects of IMF policy whether one looks at India or Zambia. In 1996, the World Bank reported that on average the debt service payments from Sub-Saharan Africa amounted to about 5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product; spending on health was about 2 per cent. “The burden of debt service payments on the provision of social services becomes starkly obvious,” the Bank reported (Taking Action for Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa). Health is less important than bond ratings.
The United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report (2010) contains new data on poverty using the Multidimensional Poverty Index. What it shows is that eight Indian provincial states contain more poor people than twenty-six of the poorest African countries. Since 1991, when India opened the door to liberalization, social distress has increased dramatically. It is only old-school racism that retains “Africa” as the symbol of poverty; the global poor house is overrun by Indians.
These are the social consequences of the IMF’s orthodoxy as far as the Global South is concerned. The Fund’s “science” of economic growth never applied to the United States itself. Between 1997 and 2005, half a trillion dollars of hard-earned reserves went from South to North as debt servicing and reserve accumulation. The Atlantic banks leveraged this money into the financial sector, building up the huge ponzi scheme that masquerades as a stock market. Into this mix came Alan Greenspan’s “put,” the injection of liquidity into the system to protect (that is, inflate) asset prices, to create the bubbles that would explode first in 2000 (the dotcom bubble) and then in 2007 (the housing bubble).
The IMF’s self-study of the debacle found that it had “praised the United States for its light-touch regulation and supervision that permitted the rapid financial innovation that ultimately contributed to the problems in the financial system” (Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, IMF Performance in the Run-up to the Financial and Economic Crisis, 2004-07, January 10, 2011). Mirroring Greenspan, the IMF “recommended to other advanced countries to follow the U. S./U. K. approaches to the financial sector,” and remarkably, “did not sufficiently analyze what was driving the housing bubble or what roles monetary and financial policies might have played in the process.” Neither the IMF nor the Federal Reserve warned against the lack of leverage limits and the lack of risk management. Few complained about the dangerous inflation of the asset bubbles by Greenspan. High rates of inequality in the United States combined with high rates of financial manipulation by the banks created a toxic environment that had to collapse.
DSK appeared on the scene with a few bromides about inequality and de-regulation. But he did not try to shift the course of the Fund. It was all rhetoric. This was clear in southern Europe, where the Fund stood with the creditors, keeping money “sound” and asking the people to undertake “austerity.” The code-words are the same.
Creativity is the order of the day. Pedro Páez, a former minister of the government of Ecuador, proposes to decouple the world’s economies “from the dollar’s crisis logic.” The “commercial dependency (and intra-firm trade) with the North is sky high,” Páez noted. He proposed a series of Regional Monetary Arrangements and regional currencies. If these came into effect, the South could reduce “the artificial need for dollars in the regional trade, financial markets, and therefore, the technical need for reserves through the deployment of intra-continental system of settlements.” Such a project would bring countries within regions closer together and prevent distant climes from complete capitulation to the wiles of the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank and the gargantuan banks of Wall Street, the City of London and the Finanzplatz. Páez’ ideas take us some way from the ancient rubbish heap of IMF thought. Better late than never.
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu
