EMPIRE OF CHAOS
ECONOMIC WARFARE
"The manipulation of market forces by powerful global actors (international money managers and the IMF) constitutes a form of financial and economic warfare. No need to recolonise lost territory or send in invading armies. In the late 20th century, the outright 'conquest of nations', meaning the control over productive assets, labour, natural resources and institutions, can be carried out in an impersonal fashion from the corporate boardroom, often resulting in immediate disruptions in the functioning of national economies."
Michel Chossudovsky, 1998
"The policy of economic sanctions against Iraq is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple as that. Five thousand children are dying every month.
... I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price for economic sanctions. On the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of treated water. What is clear is that the United Nations Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention."
... I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price for economic sanctions. On the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of treated water. What is clear is that the United Nations Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention."
Denis Halliday, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, resigned after thirty-four years with the UN
"What is happening in Yemen is the willful subjugation of millions of innocent civilians to starvation, disease and ruin.
... Seven million people face starvation, and 19 out of 28 million of Yemen's population are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
... More than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, and nearly 40,000 injured. UNICEF reports nearly 300,000 cholera cases, and the infection is spreading at a rate of 5,000 new cases per day.
... The blockade of imports of food, medicine, and fuel, which Yemen is completely dependent on, is making the situation dire beyond comprehension. If humanitarian aid is not provided immediately, millions of children will starve to death."
... Seven million people face starvation, and 19 out of 28 million of Yemen's population are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
... More than 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, and nearly 40,000 injured. UNICEF reports nearly 300,000 cholera cases, and the infection is spreading at a rate of 5,000 new cases per day.
... The blockade of imports of food, medicine, and fuel, which Yemen is completely dependent on, is making the situation dire beyond comprehension. If humanitarian aid is not provided immediately, millions of children will starve to death."
Alon Ben-Meir, 2017
SANCTIONS
"It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies such as irrigation works (denying them) to the civilian population or to the adverse Party ... for any motive."
Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Convention of 1977
"What we were doing in Iraq with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"If a private individual were to intentionally kill innocent children, most everyone would recognize that as the epitome of evil. Yet, rarely is there an U.S. op-ed or an editorial commenting on the evil of killing Iraqi children with the sanctions that the U.S. government enforced for more than 10 years."
Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017
"Because economic sanctions result in shortages of food and medical supplies, their most severe consequences are often felt by the persons who are least culpable and most vulnerable."
Dr. Michèle Barry in 'Annals of Internal Medicine'
"Prior to 1990, 95 percent of urban households in Iraq had access to potable water, as did three quarters of rural households. Soon after the Persian Gulf War, there were widespread outbreaks of cholera and typhoid - diseases that had been largely eradicated in Iraq - as well as massive increases in child and infant dysentery, and skyrocketing child and infant mortality rates. By 1996 all sewage-treatment plants had broken down."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"The immediate consequence of eight years of sanctions [U.S.-backed UN Security Council Resolution 687 established sanctions which were begun in 1990 against the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991] has been a dramatic fall in living standards, the collapse of the infrastructure, and a serious decline in the availability of public services."
Brian Cloughley, 2010
"Before the Persian Gulf War, Iraq was a rapidly developing country, with free education, ample electricity, modernized agriculture, and a robust middle class. According to the World Health Organization, 93 percent of the population had access to health care. The devastation of the Gulf War and the sanctions that preceded and sustained such devastation changed all that."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"In 1996, the television news show 60 Minutes asked Madeleine Albright about the high death toll among Iraqi children from the sanctions. Why Albright? She was the U.S. government's official representative to the United Nations - the government's diplomatic spokesperson to the world.
60 Minutes asked Albright whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were worth it. By "it" they were referring to the U.S. government's attempt to achieve regime-change in Iraq, which would oust Iraq's ruler (and a former partner and ally of the U.S. government), Saddam Hussein, from power and replace him with a new approved U.S. ruler.
Albright's answer was revealing. She said that while the issue was a difficult one, the deaths were nonetheless worth it. "
60 Minutes asked Albright whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were worth it. By "it" they were referring to the U.S. government's attempt to achieve regime-change in Iraq, which would oust Iraq's ruler (and a former partner and ally of the U.S. government), Saddam Hussein, from power and replace him with a new approved U.S. ruler.
Albright's answer was revealing. She said that while the issue was a difficult one, the deaths were nonetheless worth it. "
Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017
"When strong governments wish to impose their will on weaker regimes, they often resort to sanctions."
Brian Cloughley, 2010
"The death of some 5-6,000 children a month [under the U.S.-backed UN Security Council-established sanctions which were begun in 1990] is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad."
Dennis Halliday, 2010
"Nearly everything for Iraq's entire infrastructure - electricity, roads, telephones, water treatment - as well as much of the equipment and supplies related to food and medicine has been subject to Security Council review. In practice, this has meant that the United States and Britain subjected hundreds of contracts to elaborate scrutiny, without the involvement of any other country on the council; and after that scrutiny, the United States, only occasionally seconded by Britain, consistently blocked or delayed hundreds of humanitarian contracts."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"Sanctions closed down the entire Iraqi economy and devastated the people. Iraqi families could not buy food or medicine or school books or basic household commodities. Children starved and died. Literacy was wiped out in a single generation. The future of the country was ravaged in all parts. It was deliberate cruelty and a mockery of the humanitarian principles embodied by the United Nations."
Susan Lindauer
"The Iraqi people are suffering untold horrors. Save the Children reports that Iraq has endured a 150 percent increase in the rate of infant mortality since the beginning of sanctions in 1990. This increase is wo rse than infant mortality in AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa. Half of the country's children suffer from malnutrition. Less than a third of them now attend school, in contrast to the near universal attendance before the invasion in 2003. Women's status has plummeted. The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq declares "Women of Iraq have gradually let go of most of their 20I century gains and privileges in the last 4 years of occupation." 9 Estimates of unemployment range from 48 percent to as high as 70 percent. The UN found that among those who are employed, 54 percent survives on less than $1 a day. The Iraq government's Central Statistical Bureau found that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer "absolute poverty," lacking adequate access to food, clothing, and shelter to survive."
Ashley Smith
"In the late 1980s the mortality rate for Iraqi children under five years old was about fifty per thousand. By 1994 it had nearly doubled, to just under ninety. By 1999 (due to U.S. bombing of infrastructure and sanctions) it had increased again, this time to nearly 130; that is, 13 percent of all Iraqi children were dead before their fifth birthday. For the most part, they die as a direct or indirect result of contaminated water."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"Sanctions do not impact on governance effectively and instead they damage the innocent people of the country. in addition to the tragedy of Iraq itself, is the fact that the United Nations Security Council member states are maintaining a program of economic sanctions deliberately, knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month. And that definition fits genocide."
Dennis Halliday, 2010
"The United States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to purposefully minimize the humanitarian goods that enter the Iraq. And it has done so in the face of enormous human suffering, including massive increases in child mortality and widespread epidemics."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"During the decade Iraqi children were dying, from U.S. sanctions year after year, there were few op-eds and editorials in the U.S. mainstream press pointing out the evil in killing innocent children. It's almost as if the deaths of those children were considered to be no big deal, especially since the killings were part of an ongoing sanctions policy, which has become a well-established part of U.S. foreign policy. The notion was that killing children by sanctions was different from lining them up against a wall and shooting them or exploding a bombing within their midst."
Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017
"The U.N. adopted economic sanctions in 1945, in its charter, as a means of maintaining global order. But only those sanctions imposed on Iraq have been comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect of the country's imports and exports is controlled, which is particularly damaging to a country recovering from war. Since the program began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a result of the sanctions."
Joy Gordon, 2002
"Foreign children don't always matter to war planners and their supporters. After all, when U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright was asked on television whether she considered the deaths of half a million children a reasonable result of U.S. sanctions, she replied, "This is a very hard choice, but ... we think the price is worth it."
Brian Cloughley, 2010
"The sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s continued killing Iraqi children all the way through 2003, when the U.S. military, using the 9/11 attacks to garner support, invaded Iraq to achieve the regime change that the sanctions - and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children - had failed to achieve. "
Jacob G. Hornberger, 2017
"Thirteen years of the US-UK driven embargo of Iraq resulted in the deaths of an average of six thousand children a month from embargo-related causes."
Felicity Arbuthnot, 2015
"The U.S. embargo against Cuba, one of the few that includes both food and medicine, has been described as a war against public health with high human costs."
Brian Cloughley, 2010
CURRENCY MANIPULATION
"Since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, all markets and even our own currency have become more and more vulnerable to manipulation by the banking elite. We have lived our entire lives in a rigged market, not a free market."
Giordano Bruno, 2010
"For every winner in the game played with phantom capital, there is a loser; and the biggest losers are those Third World countries that have been seduced into opening their financial markets to currency manipulation, allowing them to be targeted in powerful speculative raids that can and have destroyed their currencies and their economies."
Ellen Hodgson Brown, 2007
"The infamous `conditionalities' policy for procuring emergency IMF loans remains in force to this day. The prospective recipient of money must convince inspectors it is implementing a "realistic rate of exchange as defined by the IMF. The focus on the exchange rate allows the IMF to control a country's fiscal policy, government expenditure, tax policy, and public enterprise policy - in short, every aspect of national economic life. The formula is invariably the same. The debtor country is forced to slash imports, severely devalue its domestic currency (ensuring that relative dollar-denominated debt increases by multiples), and impose draconian cuts in government subsidies for food and other necessaries, while opening vital areas of the national economy to foreign takeovers on the cheap, justified as `free market reforms' by the IMF."
Executive Intelligence Review
"There should be no doubt by now, that Washington is going for the Russian jugular. The attack on the ruble provides clear evidence that the US will not be satisfied until Russia has been decimated and reduced to "a permanent state of colonial dependency." (Chomsky) The United States has launched a full-blown economic war on Russia.
... Washington persevered with its audacious strategy, undeterred by the vast collateral damage, never losing sight of its ultimate objective; to deprive Moscow of crucial oil revenues, to crash the ruble, and to open up Central Asia for imperial expansion and US military bases."
... Washington persevered with its audacious strategy, undeterred by the vast collateral damage, never losing sight of its ultimate objective; to deprive Moscow of crucial oil revenues, to crash the ruble, and to open up Central Asia for imperial expansion and US military bases."
Mike Whitney, 2014
"The IMF and the international banks regulated by the BIS (Bank of International Settlements) are a team: the international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy, then the international banks come as vulture investors in the name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital inadequate and insolvent by the BIS. "
Eric Walberg, 2011
"When pressure needs to be applied to individual states that are not following dictates of the institutions of global governance, the market is turned against them in a barrage of economic warfare, often in the form of currency speculation and derivatives trading. The result of this economic warfare against a nation is that it must then turn to these same global institutions to come to its rescue."
Andrew Gavin Marshall, 2010
"Since 1971, floating exchange rates for most of the world's currencies had created an ongoing atmosphere of speculation, which dramatically increased with computer technology, allowing instantaneous multiple transactions around the world.
... The speculative role of banks and financial intermediaries has increased dramatically.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 was precipitated by western banks with the intent of crippling these high growth economies, which were using traditional government-supported national economic development plans to encourage stable, balanced growth, uncontrolled by international capital."
... The speculative role of banks and financial intermediaries has increased dramatically.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 was precipitated by western banks with the intent of crippling these high growth economies, which were using traditional government-supported national economic development plans to encourage stable, balanced growth, uncontrolled by international capital."
Eric Walberg, 2011
"A month before President Mobutu Sese Seko fled the country [Zaire/DRCongo], the IMF had recommended halting currency issue completely and abruptly as part of an economic recovery programme. And a few months later upon assuming power in Kinshasa, the new government of Laurent Kabila Desire was ordered by the IMF to freeze civil service wages with a view to restoring macro-economic stability. Eroded by hyperinflation, the average public sector wage had fallen to 30,000 new Zaires (NZ) a month, the equivalent of one U.S. dollar.
The IMF's demands were tantamount to maintaining the entire population in abysmal poverty. They precluded from the outset a meaningful post-war economic reconstruction, thereby contributing to fuelling the continuation of the Congolese civil war.
The IMF's demands were tantamount to maintaining the entire population in abysmal poverty. They precluded from the outset a meaningful post-war economic reconstruction, thereby contributing to fuelling the continuation of the Congolese civil war.
Michel Chossudovsky, 2014
"Deep-pocket Wall Street banks and speculators can simply vacuum the money out of an economy leaving the country broken and penniless. This nihilistic decimation of emerging markets via capital flight is what the kleptocracy breezily refers to as "free markets", the unwavering plundering of civilization to fatten the coffers of the swinish few at the top of the foodchain.
Putin needs to put his foot down now; stop the outflow of cash, stop the conversion of rubles to dollars, force investors to recycle their money into the domestic economy, indict the central bank governors and trundle them off to the hoosegow, and reassert the power of the people over the markets. If he doesn't, then the speculators will continue to peck away until Russia's reserves are drained-dry and the country is pushed back into another long-term slump."
Putin needs to put his foot down now; stop the outflow of cash, stop the conversion of rubles to dollars, force investors to recycle their money into the domestic economy, indict the central bank governors and trundle them off to the hoosegow, and reassert the power of the people over the markets. If he doesn't, then the speculators will continue to peck away until Russia's reserves are drained-dry and the country is pushed back into another long-term slump."
Mike Whitney, 2014
"FULL SPECTRUM" DESTRUCTION
"Economic interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states as well as the persistent threat of military intervention have played a crucial role in sustaining and imposing the U.S. dollar as the de facto international currency.
Washington's military agenda, which includes all out war as well as the latent threat of military intervention, constitutes a means to displacing and ultimately destroying the financial and banking institutions of sovereign countries."
Washington's military agenda, which includes all out war as well as the latent threat of military intervention, constitutes a means to displacing and ultimately destroying the financial and banking institutions of sovereign countries."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2010
"Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."
John Perkins in his book "Confessions of Economic Hit Man"
"In the last 10 months, the United States has executed a near-perfect takedown of the Russian economy. Washington has consolidated its power in the Kiev, Ukraine, removed dissident elements in the government, deployed the CIA to oversee operations, launched a number of attacks on rebel forces in the east, transferred ownership of Ukraine's vital pipeline system to US puppets and foreign corporations, created a tollbooth separating Moscow from the lucrative EU market, foiled a Russian plan to build an alternate pipeline to southern Europe (South Stream), built up its military assets in the Balkans and Black Sea and, finally-the cherry on the cake-initiated a daring sneak attack on Russia's currency by employing its Saudi-proxy to flood the market with oil, push prices off a cliff, and trigger a run on the ruble which slashed its value by more than half forcing retail currency platforms to stop trading the battered ruble until prices stabilized."
Mike Whitney, 2014
"The Venezuelan opposition has orchestrated economic sabotage, corporate smuggling, black market currency manipulations, full scale hoarding of food and essential products. They have closed highways, burned public buildings, have dropped grenades from a helicopter on to the Supreme Court offices, have assaulted, lynched and even burned alive young men of dark skin "who looked Chavista". This is a violent opposition steeped in racism and classism against their own people and in the service of foreign powers and big oil."
sociologist Maria Páez, Victor at Law Commission of Ontario in Canada, 2017
STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT
"Beginning in the late 1970s, the World Bank and IMF mandated a shift away from industrialization toward economies based solely on the export of raw materials and agricultural products. Loans were now to be used as leverage to impose what were called Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)-programs that mandated slashing social spending, eliminating price subsidies and trade tariffs, and privatizing government-owned industries and services-all in order to pay down foreign debt."
Lena Weinstein
"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began to tie loans to "structural adjustment" programs, which channeled more of the debtor country's financial and productive resources toward debt repayment.
... Structural adjustments were originally imposed on an ad hoc basis upon individual nations when it appeared that they could not keep up with existing debt payments. By 1985, fifteen debtor nations had been subjected to SAPs, and by 1991, a quarter of the World Bank's total lending was tied to structural adjustment in 54 nations. As more of the "debtor" nations' dwindling resources went to debt service, new loans were simply used to repay previous loans, and the total debt of the low income nations more than quadrupled from $100 to $473 billion between 1980 and 1992. World Bank and IMF "reforms" continued, and by the mid-1990s, more than a hundred countries and 80 percent of the world's population had been "structurally adjusted." The average developing nation's debt payments were a third of its gross national product.
... When no more money or exports can be squeezed from the poor, selling state-owned companies to Northern corporations becomes an option... Once again, a handful of multinational corporations are the beneficiaries.
Structural adjustment proved to be such a useful tool for leveraging corporate power that it was time to make it a permanent part of the global economy, and that is just what the international trade treaties of the 1990s have done - codified the elements of structural adjustment into international law."
... Structural adjustments were originally imposed on an ad hoc basis upon individual nations when it appeared that they could not keep up with existing debt payments. By 1985, fifteen debtor nations had been subjected to SAPs, and by 1991, a quarter of the World Bank's total lending was tied to structural adjustment in 54 nations. As more of the "debtor" nations' dwindling resources went to debt service, new loans were simply used to repay previous loans, and the total debt of the low income nations more than quadrupled from $100 to $473 billion between 1980 and 1992. World Bank and IMF "reforms" continued, and by the mid-1990s, more than a hundred countries and 80 percent of the world's population had been "structurally adjusted." The average developing nation's debt payments were a third of its gross national product.
... When no more money or exports can be squeezed from the poor, selling state-owned companies to Northern corporations becomes an option... Once again, a handful of multinational corporations are the beneficiaries.
Structural adjustment proved to be such a useful tool for leveraging corporate power that it was time to make it a permanent part of the global economy, and that is just what the international trade treaties of the 1990s have done - codified the elements of structural adjustment into international law."
George Draffan in his book "The Elite Consensus"
"The IMF and World Bank are the chief pushers of the whole scheme of structural adjustments that are designed to further open up the Third World economies for penetration and plunder by private monopoly corporations. We call for the abrogation of all loan agreements that provide for structural adjustment, public assumption of private debts and the further exposure of the Third World economies to plunder by private multinational giants."
Cebu Declaration, Philippine-Asia Jubilee Campaign Against the Debt, May 18, 1999, Cebu City, Philippines
"The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'."
Arundhati Roy
"Structural adjustment as it is imposed by the World Bank and IMF on most countries of the South and on the former socialist countries in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is unilateral. That is, adjustment of the economies of those countries is to the needs of dominant capital. That means the needs of the triad - the U.S., the European Union and Japan-and nothing more."
Samir Amin, 2000
"The debt is used as a justification to maintain neoliberal policies, including what are known as structural adjustment programs, as institutional mechanisms to perpetuate a state of dependence. Bail-out programs by creditors, with the support of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have only served to ensure the continuity for mechanisms to keep countries deep in debt."
Tegucigalpa Declaration, Latin American and Caribbean Jubilee 2000 Platform, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, January 27, 1999
"By the 1980s, U.S. policymakers were rejecting the view that a more prosperous, economically independent Third World would serve the interests of U.S. capitalism. And once there no longer was a competing socialist world to which Third World leaders might threaten to turn, the United States felt freer than ever to undo any kind of autonomous development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. One rollback weapon is the debt. In order to meet payments and receive new credits from the US-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Third World governments have had to agree to merciless "structural adjustment programs," including reductions in social programs, cuts in wages, the elimination of import controls, the removal of restrictions on foreign investments, the privatization of state enterprises, and the elimination of domestic food production in favor of high profit export crops."
Michael Parenti
"Structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and IMF have brought disaster to the working poor of as many as 100 countries, forced to open their markets to a flood of cheap imports while the rich refuse to abandon their subsidies, quotas and high tariffs. The result is brutal suppression of wages and living standards and elimination of social programs."
Noam Chomsky in his book "Year 501"
"The IMF imposes strict conditions on debtor nations that force them to concentrate on producing cheap exports in order to increase foreign reserves needed to pay interest on their debt. These structural adjustment programs include currency devaluation, reduced wages, cutbacks to social programs, and reliance on the market system. All of these programs benefit creditor nations such as the United States at the expense of the debtor nations."
David Model in his book "Lying for Empire"
"The United States is now the world's largest debtor nation, yet has avoided the pain of "structural adjustments" imposed on other debtor economies. US interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors."
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors."
Michael Hudson
"Never before in history have the poor financed the rich on such a scale and paid so dearly for their servitude. During the 1980s, the Third World sent to the West $220 billion more than was sent to them in any form. At the current rates of interest, it is a mathematical impossibility for most countries to pay off their debt. Many had to agree to 'structural adjustment' by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This has often meant the end of uncertain protection for the old, young and sick and 'wage restraint' in countries where the difference between wage and peonage is slight."
John Pilger
"During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. used the dictatorship of Baby Doc Duvalier to impose what the International Monetary Fund calls a "structural adjustment program." Haitians called it "the plan of death." Duvalier opened up the Haitian economy to heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural exports, especially rice, which undermined the ability of Haitian peasants to compete on the market."
Ashley Smith
"When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called 'structural adjustment policies.' These policies require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction."
Global Exchange
"Fiscal austerity [structural adjustment] will imply massive cuts in social spending, which will do to the developed world what they did to the 'developing' world: health, education and social services will be cut, with public employees in those and other sectors fired, creating a massive new wave of unemployed people. Simultaneously, taxes will be dramatically increased, particularly on the middle and lower classes, which would then be more impoverished than ever before."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Since the 1980s, it is mainly the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF that act as the enforcers of neoliberalism. These programs are levied against the countries of the South which can be extorted due to their debts. Meanwhile, numerous military interventions and wars help to take possession of the assets that still remain, secure resources, install neoliberalism as the global economic politics, crush resistance movements, and facilitate the lucrative business of reconstruction."
Claudia von Werlhof
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF), WORLD BANK
& "ECONOMIC REFORM"
& "ECONOMIC REFORM"
"The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'."
Arundhati Roy
"The real axis of evil is composed of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund."
George Katsiaficas in the book "Masters of War"
"The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) are largely controlled by the rich countries so these institutions devise and implement policies that those countries want."
Ha-Joon Chang in his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism"
"The United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights."
Edward S. Herman
"The World Bank and IMF operate as global loan sharks."
Lena Weinstein, 2008
"When the IMF and the World Bank force a country to cut wages, lay off workers, produce for export instead of their own people, and sell off public property to cronies for less than its vallue, that's called "economic reform."
Robert Naiman, 1999
"Mexico was the star pupil. It did everything right, and religiously followed the World Bank and IMF's prescriptions. It was called another great economic miracle, and it probably was for the rich. But for most of the Mexican people, it's been a complete disaster."
Noam Chomsky in his book "The Common Good"
"The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which represents most of the major banks in the Western world, produced a proposal [1980s] that basically demanded that developing countries sacrifice government spending on health, education, and welfare in order to service the debt and that they increase the export of commodity or luxury goods to earn more money."
Helen Caldicott in her book " If You Love this Planet"
"The World Bank and the IMF are controlled by the governments of the world's richest countries. The G-7 together have more than 40 per cent of the directors' votes. The US holds 16.45 per cent of the votes at the World Bank and 17 per cent of those at the IMF. Since an 85-per-cent majority is required for the most important decisions, the US effectively has the power of veto."
Jeremy Seabrook in his book "World Poverty"
"We turned the World Bank, the IMF, and other "multinational" institutions into colonizing tools. We negotiated lucrative deals for U.S. corporations, established "free" trade agreements that blatantly served our exporters at the expense of those in the Third World, and burdened other countries with unmanageable debts. In effect, we created surrogate governments that appeared to represent their people but in reality were our servants."
John Perkins in his book "The Secret History of the American Empire"
"The World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO consider the ideal country to be one in which all assets and resources are owned by foreign corporations producing for export to generate foreign exchange to repay international debts. Their favored country has no public services. Power, water, education, health care, social security, and financial services are all owned and operated by foreign corporations for profit on a fee for service basis. Food and other goods for domestic consumption are all imported from abroad and paid for with money borrowed from foreign banks."
David Korten
"What has to be understood is that both the International Monetary fund and the World bank are actually surrogates for the U.S. Treasury. They are both located at 19th and H Streets, Northwest, in Washington, DC, and their voting rules ensure that they can do nothing without the approval of the secretary of the Treasury."
Chalmers Johnson in his book "Sorrows of Empire"
"Beginning in the late 1970s, the World Bank and IMF mandated a shift away from industrialization toward economies based solely on the export of raw materials and agricultural products. Loans were now to be used as leverage to impose what were called Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)-programs that mandated slashing social spending, eliminating price subsidies and trade tariffs, and privatizing government-owned industries and services-all in order to pay down foreign debt."
Lena Weinstein, 2008
"Under the brunt of IMF economic medicine, imposed on developing countries, national central banks are prevented from expanding the supply of money thereby shunting the process of credit creation. Once these measures are imposed, the only way to finance public and private investment is through dollar denominated foreign loans. What this signifies is that Wall Street and the U.S. Federal Reserve control the domestic credit market of developing countries, namely the expansion of credit in domestic currency."
Michel Chossudovsky
"Unlike the formal imperialism of the British empire; the United States uses the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and other international bodies to legitimize imperial interventions into the political and economic systems of developing nations."
Ivan Eland in his book "The Empire Has No Clothes"
"The United States has a high degree of control in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund because of the extent of its financial contributions and the formula used for weighting votes. The IMF, in particular, imposes strict conditions on debtor nations that force them to concentrate on producing cheap exports in order to increase foreign reserves needed to pay interest on their debt. These structural adjustment programs include currency devaluation, reduced wages, cutbacks to social programs, and reliance on the market system. All of these programs benefit creditor nations such as the United States at the expense of the debtor nations."
David Model
"The aim of Washington's IMF "market reforms" in the former Soviet Union was brutally simple: destroy the economic ties that bound Moscow to each part of the Soviet Union. IMF shock therapy was intended to create weak, unstable economies on the periphery of Russia, dependent on Western capital and on dollar inflows for their survival -- a form of neocolonialism. The Russians were to get the standard Third World treatment. IMF conditionalities and a plunge into poverty for the population. A tiny elite were allowed to become fabulously rich in dollar terms, and manipulable by Wall Street bankers and investors."
F. William Engdahl
"Although Haiti currently has an elected government under President René Préval, the U.S., Canada and France play a major role in financing its ministries, while the majority of "aid" funds are diverted to a plethora of Non-Governmental Organizations (an estimated 4,000 operate in Haiti). For example, the agricultural department in Haiti shares control of its budget with some 800 different NGOs.
These same wealthy nations and the international financial institutions also direct Haiti's domestic policy through the 10,000-member, UN-sponsored foreign military, police and political contingent known as MINUSTAH.
The [2004] coup and the current occupation have been a continuation (even a culmination) of years of American/World Bank/IMF economic policy impositions that turned Haiti into one of the lowest-wage (lowest in the hemisphere), export-friendly and regulation-free economies in the world, and offering profitable business and resource extraction opportunities for foreign investors."
These same wealthy nations and the international financial institutions also direct Haiti's domestic policy through the 10,000-member, UN-sponsored foreign military, police and political contingent known as MINUSTAH.
The [2004] coup and the current occupation have been a continuation (even a culmination) of years of American/World Bank/IMF economic policy impositions that turned Haiti into one of the lowest-wage (lowest in the hemisphere), export-friendly and regulation-free economies in the world, and offering profitable business and resource extraction opportunities for foreign investors."
Niraj Joshi, 2009
"The United States is now the world's largest debtor yet has avoided the pain of "structural adjustments" imposed on other debtor economies. US interest-rate and tax reductions in the face of exploding trade and budget deficits are seen as the height of hypocrisy in view of the austerity programs that Washington forces on other countries via the IMF and other Washington vehicles.
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors."
The United States tells debtor economies to sell off their public utilities and natural resources, raise their interest rates and increase taxes while gutting their social safety nets to squeeze out money to pay creditors."
Michael Hudson, 2009
"Within the neo-liberal economic order, it was the powerful western (primarily US and Western European) states that imposed neo-mercantilist or statist policies in order to protect and promote their interests within the global political economy.
... The US has enormous agriculture export subsidies, which make US agriculture and grain an easily affordable, attractive and accessible commodity for importing nations. Countries of the global south (the Lesser-Developed Countries, LDCs), subject to neo-liberal policies imposed upon them by the World Bank and IMF were forced to open their economies up to foreign capital. The World Bank would bring in heavily subsidized US grain to these poor nations under the guise of "food aid," which would have the affect of destabilizing the nation's agriculture market, as the heavily subsidized US grains would be cheaper than local produce, putting farmers out of business. Most LDCs are predominantly rural based, so when the farming sector is devastated, so too is the entire nation. They plunge into economic crisis and even famine."
... The US has enormous agriculture export subsidies, which make US agriculture and grain an easily affordable, attractive and accessible commodity for importing nations. Countries of the global south (the Lesser-Developed Countries, LDCs), subject to neo-liberal policies imposed upon them by the World Bank and IMF were forced to open their economies up to foreign capital. The World Bank would bring in heavily subsidized US grain to these poor nations under the guise of "food aid," which would have the affect of destabilizing the nation's agriculture market, as the heavily subsidized US grains would be cheaper than local produce, putting farmers out of business. Most LDCs are predominantly rural based, so when the farming sector is devastated, so too is the entire nation. They plunge into economic crisis and even famine."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"Since the early 1980s, the "macro-economic stabilization" and structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF and the World Bank on developing countries (as a condition for the renegotiation of their external debt) have led to the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people. Contrary to the spirit of the Bretton Woods agreement, which was predicated on "economic reconstruction", and the stability of major exchange rated the structural adjustment program has contributed largely to destabilizing national currencies and ruining the economies of developing countries.
Internal purchasing power has collapsed, famines have erupted, health clinics and schools have been closed down and hundreds of millions of children have been denied the right to primary education. In several regions of the developing world, the reforms have been conducive to a resurgence of infectious diseases including tuberculosis, malaria and cholera."
Internal purchasing power has collapsed, famines have erupted, health clinics and schools have been closed down and hundreds of millions of children have been denied the right to primary education. In several regions of the developing world, the reforms have been conducive to a resurgence of infectious diseases including tuberculosis, malaria and cholera."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2003
"The IMF and the international banks regulated by the BIS are a team: the international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy, then the international banks come as vulture investors in the name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital inadequate and insolvent by the BIS (Bank of International Settlements). "
Eric Walberg, 2011
"The IMF and the international banks regulated by the BIS [Bank for International Settlements] are a team: the international banks lend recklessly to borrowers in emerging economies to create a foreign currency debt crisis, the IMF arrives as a carrier of monetary virus in the name of sound monetary policy, then the international banks come as vulture investors in the name of financial rescue to acquire national banks deemed capital inadequate and insolvent by the BIS."
economist Henry CK Lui
"The solution to the debt crisis becomes the cause of further indebtedness. The IMF's economic stabilization package is, in theory, intended to assist countries in restructuring their economies with a view to generating a surplus on their balance of trade so as to pay back the debt and initiate a process of economic recovery. Exactly the opposite occurs. The very process of "belt-tightening" imposed by the creditors undermines economic recovery and the ability of countries to repay their debt.
... IMF-World Bank reforms brutally dismantle the social sectors of developing countries, undoing the efforts and struggles of the post-colonial period and reversing "with the stroke of a pen" the fulfillment of past progress. Throughout the developing world, there is a consistent and coherent pattern: the IMF-World Bank reform package constitutes a coherent program of economic and social collapse. The austerity measures lead to the disintegration of the state, the national economy is remolded, production for the domestic market is destroyed through the compression of real earnings and domestic production is redirected towards the world market. These measures go far beyond the phasing out of import-substituting industries. They destroy the entire fabric of the domestic economy."
... IMF-World Bank reforms brutally dismantle the social sectors of developing countries, undoing the efforts and struggles of the post-colonial period and reversing "with the stroke of a pen" the fulfillment of past progress. Throughout the developing world, there is a consistent and coherent pattern: the IMF-World Bank reform package constitutes a coherent program of economic and social collapse. The austerity measures lead to the disintegration of the state, the national economy is remolded, production for the domestic market is destroyed through the compression of real earnings and domestic production is redirected towards the world market. These measures go far beyond the phasing out of import-substituting industries. They destroy the entire fabric of the domestic economy."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2003
"The Tiger economies were a major embarrassment to the IMF free-market model. Their very success in blending private enterprise with a strong state economic role was a threat to the IMF free-market agenda. So long as the Tigers appeared to succeed with a model based on a strong state role, the former communist states and others could argue against taking the extreme IMF course."
F. William Engdahl
"The IMF serves as enforcer and collection agency for the international bankers by pressuring Third World debtor nations to open their economies to multinational corporations owned by their banks."
Dean Henderson, 2005
"When the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called 'structural adjustment policies.' These policies-or SAPs, as they are sometimes called-require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction."
Global Exchange
"Finance today is acting in a way that de-industrializes economies, not builds them up. The "plan" is austerity for labor, industry and all sectors outside of finance, as in the IMF programs imposed on hapless Third World debtor countries."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2010
"Since its inception at the beginning of Europe's sovereign debt crisis, the unholy alliance between the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission has visited untold damage on the economies and societies of a long and fast-growing list of countries."
Don Quijones, 2014
"The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over [Including Washington]. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion."
David DeGraw, 2011
"The IMF's loans, policy prescriptions and reforms that it imposes on other nations have the effect of ultimately bailing out Western banks. Countries are forced to impoverish their populations and open up their economies to foreign exploitation so that they can receive a loan from the IMF, which then allows the indebted nation to simply pay the interest on its debt to Western banks. As a result, the IMF loan adds to the overall national debt (which will have to be repaid down the line), and because the nation is in crisis, all of its new loans come with higher interest rates (since the country is deemed a high risk).
This has the effect of expanding a country's overall debt and ensuring future financial and debt crises, forcing the country to continue in the death-spiral of seeking more loans (and imposing more austerity and reforms) to pay off the interest on larger debts. As a result, entire nations and regions are plunged into poverty and abusive forms of exploitation, with their political and economic systems largely controlled by international technocrats at the IMF and World Bank, mostly for the benefit of Western commercial banks and transnational corporations."
This has the effect of expanding a country's overall debt and ensuring future financial and debt crises, forcing the country to continue in the death-spiral of seeking more loans (and imposing more austerity and reforms) to pay off the interest on larger debts. As a result, entire nations and regions are plunged into poverty and abusive forms of exploitation, with their political and economic systems largely controlled by international technocrats at the IMF and World Bank, mostly for the benefit of Western commercial banks and transnational corporations."
Andrew Gavin Marshall
"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was the most important avenue of U.S. influence in developing countries for the past three decades. The IMF was positioned, by informal arrangement, at the top of a creditors' cartel. Governments who did not reach agreements with the Fund on various economic policies were in most cases denied credit not only from the IMF, but from the larger World Bank, other multi-lateral lenders such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the governments of rich countries, and sometimes even the private sector. This gave Washington, which has dominated the IMF since its inception in 1944, a powerful lever to promote a whole series of economic reforms in developing countries."
Mark Weisbrot, 2008
"African ruling classes deposit so much money from Africa into foreign banks, what's called capital flight, billions more have gone into those banks than has been lent to Africa. According to one study, sub-Saharan Africa experienced capital flight of $196 billion between 1970 and 1996 - whereas these countries' combined debt in 1996 stood at $178 billion. A good portion of this money comes from funds siphoned off from foreign aid and sent back to the private accounts of African rulers in Western banks. This dynamic helps explain why African ruling classes do not refuse the World Bank and IMF terms, as deadly as they are for the majority in Africa: they profit off of foreign assistance."
Lena Weinstein, 2008
"Policies imposed by the World Bank, and trade liberalization rules crafted by the World Trade Organization (WTO), are creating a sweeping culture of corporate-states all over the world.
Not only has the World Bank played a major role in the creation of water scarcity and pollution, it is now transforming that scarcity into a market opportunity for water corporations.
... The erosion of water rights is now a global phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, ambitious, World Bank-driven privatization programs have emerged in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, and Nigeria. The Bank has also introduced privatization of water systems in India."
Not only has the World Bank played a major role in the creation of water scarcity and pollution, it is now transforming that scarcity into a market opportunity for water corporations.
... The erosion of water rights is now a global phenomenon. Since the early 1990s, ambitious, World Bank-driven privatization programs have emerged in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia, and Nigeria. The Bank has also introduced privatization of water systems in India."
Vandana Shiva in her book "Water Wars"
"Ronald Reagan used the World Bank to force countries to change their laws so that U.S. corporations would gain direct access to their oil."
Antonia Juhasz in her book "The Bush Agenda"
"There's a saying that the World Bank takes tax money from poor people in rich nations to give to rich people in poor nations."
Barron's, 1978
"In what became known as the Third World, approximately 80 per cent of mankind lived on the flanks of superpower rivalry, supplying raw materials for the processing economies of the First and Second Worlds, and striving to become market extensions of the market economies of the First World.
Third world politicians at that time had a different view about their international role, however. They regarded political independence as merely one essential step in the path of growth and development. They sought generalized technological advance, which should be coterminous with diversification of agriculture and the insertion of such infrastructure as would lead to the industrialization, and thereby closing of the huge gaps that separated the different worlds.
Led by Britain and France, the economic theorists of the First World determined that the export receipts of the Third World should decide the pace and quality of development and, when these fell below expectations, resort should be had to the Bretton Woods system whose machinery had been set up in the late 1940s. Above all, this meant the requirement of the stamp-of-approval of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and submission to the barbarous conditionalities which were the underpinning of IMF intervention.
... The United Nations was chosen as the arena where it was hoped that a new era of global cooperation would emerge. These hopes were never realized. One by one, the outstanding advocates of Third World development were removed from the seats of domestic power, and their solidarity was defeated in detail by the age-old principle of 'divide and conquer.' Export receipts and import prices were manipulated to create enormous gaps in balances of payments, and Third World countries were told that they must get the seal of approval of the IMF before any government or private institution would advance further loans. The IMF insisted on austere programs based on currency devaluations which increased misery in the Third World, was directly responsible for the spread of disease and was also successful in encouraging drug cultivation, as those unfortunate countries sought the chimera of a quick cash crop as a panacea for their fiscal difficulties."
Third world politicians at that time had a different view about their international role, however. They regarded political independence as merely one essential step in the path of growth and development. They sought generalized technological advance, which should be coterminous with diversification of agriculture and the insertion of such infrastructure as would lead to the industrialization, and thereby closing of the huge gaps that separated the different worlds.
Led by Britain and France, the economic theorists of the First World determined that the export receipts of the Third World should decide the pace and quality of development and, when these fell below expectations, resort should be had to the Bretton Woods system whose machinery had been set up in the late 1940s. Above all, this meant the requirement of the stamp-of-approval of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and submission to the barbarous conditionalities which were the underpinning of IMF intervention.
... The United Nations was chosen as the arena where it was hoped that a new era of global cooperation would emerge. These hopes were never realized. One by one, the outstanding advocates of Third World development were removed from the seats of domestic power, and their solidarity was defeated in detail by the age-old principle of 'divide and conquer.' Export receipts and import prices were manipulated to create enormous gaps in balances of payments, and Third World countries were told that they must get the seal of approval of the IMF before any government or private institution would advance further loans. The IMF insisted on austere programs based on currency devaluations which increased misery in the Third World, was directly responsible for the spread of disease and was also successful in encouraging drug cultivation, as those unfortunate countries sought the chimera of a quick cash crop as a panacea for their fiscal difficulties."
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