IMF: Experts in Global Economics?

[Oswy]

I've encountered a few people at other forums who quote the IMF as some kind of authority in matters of global economics and thought it might be useful and amusing to thus share the below quote in Alex Callinicos's Bonfire of Illusions (Polity, 2010), pp. 72-3:


From 2004 to the present, the world economy has enjoyed its strongest period of sustained growth since the later 1960s and early 1970s, while inflation has remained at low levels. Not only has recent global growth been high but the expansion has also been broadly shared across countries. The volatility of growth has fallen, which may seem especially surprising because the more volatile emerging market and developing countries account for a rising share of the global economy...

...A comparison of business cycles over the past century points to a secular increase in the length of expansions and a decrease in the amount of time economies spend in recession. In advanced economies, deep recessions have virtually disappeared in the post-World War II period.

IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2007, www.imf.org (http://www.imf.org/)


Check out the date; in the Autumn of 2007 the 'boffins' at the IMF were trotting out with some confidence their pro-capitalist interpretation of how great everything was. We all know what happened in 2008. At the very least it should caution anyone from thinking the IMF have any understanding, let alone a deep one, of global capitalism's trajectory.

EDIT: It might be worth compiling a list of these kinds of 'authoritative' pro-capitalist statements as good evidence of how wrong they are (or how much they are lying). If anyone has similar gaffes please share!

[Nolan]

The Imperialist Monetary Fund should just stick to what they do best and stop acting like some think tank.

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-14/guest-post-real-purpose-imf

If you look at the history of the IMF’s intervention in countries around the world you will see a trail of disaster and looting that repeats time and time again wherever they go.

The many countries that are involved are supposed to have some influence but this is proportional to their financial clout, which in truth means that the USA has most of the control of what happens and many countries have effectively no say at all.

major western nations use financial warfare to get what they want and gain influence over other countries – the IMF being one of the tools with which they do this.

Caribbean countries such as Jamaica have been destroyed by trade agreements and much the same thing has happened throughout Africa, South America and Asia at various times since world war II. What the IMF does is somewhat similar to a thug loan shark.

Countries are given a ‘helping hand’ as loans that they will have great difficulty paying back. In return for the loans the IMF wants interest and regular repayments and ‘restructuring’ of the country’s assets. What this actually means is the asset stripping of sovereign nations so that their economic wealth is transferred from the country’s/public’s ownership into private hands.

This has happened in Europe recently, with countries such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland and even Spain and Italy faced with the prospect of having to sell off national assets in order to finance repayment of loans to either the IMF or EU. Private consortiums, owned by the banks or oligarchs buy up a nation’s forests, coal industry, water supply etc so that instead of the country receiving income from its recourses the private company makes all the money off the backs of the increasingly impoverished population.

At the moment the Ukrainian people might welcome the IMF but you can be sure that in a short time the country will be financially raped and the population plunged into even worse poverty as a result of IMF ‘assistance’.

Any country with sense (like Iceland) would show the IMF the door and find a better way of clawing its way out of economic problems. Iceland is a perfect example of how a country could solve its own problems – but no-one in the media talks about this – the corpocracy does not want anyone else getting the same idea.