>I don't think that we need to bicker about the IMF. It is a tool of the
>oppressors and does terrible harm.
Now, now.
If there were no IMF--if there were no one willing and able to loan
Argentina $40 billion to try to get it through its current episode of
capital flight and foreign investor panic--how, exactly, would the
people of Argentina be better off? Every serious attempt to answer
this question I've heard involves somehow automagically
reconstituting the functions of the IMF--a kinder, gentler IMF--with
no plausible story of how the institution to carry out these
functions is to be created.
The availability of IMF loans gives countries facing financial crises
a *few* more options: Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes
created it for a reason, after all. They were not dumb.
If you want to know how the international financial system would
function in its absence, I have always thought that 1931 et sequelae
in Austria gives you a good idea of what would be likely to happen...
Brad DeLong
