The IMF Protection Racket

There seems to be strong consensus - at least outside of the US and Britain - that the IMF (International Monetary Fund) is a protection racket. Here is the Wikipedia definition of protection racket:

An extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces other less powerful entities to pay money, allegedly for protection services against external threats (usually violence or property damage). Many racketeers will coerce potential clients into buying protection through property damage or other harassment. In some cases, the racketeers do little to protect the client from other predators, and their "protection" is little more than extortion.

Another way to think of it is an offer you can't refuse. Although I didn't realize it at the time, the Mafia and protection rackets were an integral part of my childhood in Milwaukee. Back then I thought it was normal for disk jockeys to get free meals at fancy Italian restaurants (someone with Mafia credentials was repaying my father for promoting an Italian accordion player on his show). I also assumed it was normal for Italians to bury their dead in lye in back alleys and abandoned warehouses.

This is how the IMF protection scam works:


Step 1: The IMF offers you a loan (as they did Hungary in July and Ireland in November).

IMF loans come with draconian conditions - structural adjustment programs, intended to open your country to foreign corporations. There is an immediate demand for your government to slash public spending - on education, health care, social services and basic needs, such as clean drinking water. Forcing a country to privatize their public water services immediately creates a market for multinational water monopoly to move in. Likewise forcing them to privatize health services (all industrialized countries, except for the US, have national health systems) creates more favorable markets for drug and health insurance companies.

Step 2: If you refuse the loan, the ratings agencies waltz in and bankrupt your country by downgrading your credit rating.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-IMF-Protection-Racket-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110213-800.html

The S.O. and I made up a list of all the NGOs that are a danger to the economic and social security of vulnerable peoples/nations, and got to a count of 38. Were a little too tipsy to continue at that point, but there is obviously no shortage of groups that would claim to provide help while stealing your grandmother's wooden teeth and feeling up your daughter while you wait in line for a cup of rice.

and by the low number of recs, it appears it little understood by way too many people.

control the World.They use the military to enforce their iron fisted rules and blood letting if the weak refuse.

Not sure about Britain. We were a recipient of the IMF's 'protection' in 1976; and it was one of the things that helped to usher in Thatcherism, a move away from the postwar full-employment consensus, and ultimately our dependence on the banking and finance industries.