At 07:49 PM 1/8/98 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote:
>Does anybody have any thoughts on the critique of the IMF by Stiglitz
>and Sachs -- that the IMF is creating a deflationary economy to save the
>banks?
It is hard to comment without knowing the specifics (could you provide the
citations or a summary?). Did this emerge in Chicago?
It sounds like this is one of the periodic re-openings of the difference in
perspective between the World Bank-types and the IMF-types (Sachs and
Stiglitz being so long linked to the Bank). The differences were open and
strong in the 70's and early 80's and were no different than the usual
Central Bank\Finance Ministry conflicts (how much primacy to low inflation
and financial concerns vs. developmentalist\industrialist real sector concerns).
Much as the differences sound intriguing, operationally I never saw much
emerge. Partly, this is may be because the way heads were banged (by the US
et. al.) at the beginning of the Latin American debt crisis in the '80s.
There is a vague constitutional primacy given to the IMF and starting around
'83 it became near universal that the Fund Program had to be negotiated
first. Even at the intellectual level the challenges that emerged such as
Sach's and Summer's over Russia were largely kept to "inside baseball"
(although I remember it emerging a bit at the early '90's New Orleans AEA).
