On Monday, May 14, 2001 at 19:40:00 (-0700) Brad DeLong writes:
>>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.
Why not do it internally? Why do the "people" of Argentina need
external entities to lend them $40 billion?
>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.
No, they were not dumb, but they were tools of the oppressors, you
know.
Bill
