Posted: May 8, 2013 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Politics, Society | Tags: IMF, Lagarde |
By Jerome Roos On May 7, 2013 http://www.roarmag.org
Dutch, Greek and Spanish members of the Occupy movement interrupt a lecture by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the University of Amsterdam.
Christine Lagarde, the former French Finance Minister and current Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, was treated to an Occupy-style mic-check at the University of Amsterdam on Tuesday. During a lecture at the university’s economics department, a group of students rose up to interrupt (or rather start) the discussion, confronting the Fund’s chief with a number of inconvenient questions.
Attendees had been asked to send in questions before the “debate”, but the protesters were angry that their critical notes appeared to have been ignored. By standing up and submitting the IMF chief to a mic-check, they tried to get their concerns across anyway: “why is technocracy better than democracy?” one activist asked. Another asked Lagarde why the IMF submits developing countries to Western imperialism, to which the upper-class moderator tellingly responded that “we will not do that question”. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 24, 2012 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: International | Tags: IMF |
– Update July 19, 2012I.
II. Key IMF Financial Statistics
III. Current Financial Arrangements
IV. Status of Commitments of HIPC Assistance
V. Status of Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative Assistance
Introduction
The following tables, which are updated weekly, provide information on the IMF’s financial activities. Definitions for the terms contained in the tables are provided below each table. The data are based on the most current information available at the time and are provided for the reader’s convenience. The information is not intended to replace other official IMF financial reports and statements.
Key IMF Financial Statistics (Table 1) A summary of financial assistance to members, available resources, arrears, and key IMF rates.
Current Financial Arrangements (Tables 2a and 2b) Current Stand-By, Extended and Poverty Reduction and Growth (PRG) arrangements. The tables do not include members whose financial arrangements with the IMF have expired, but may have outstanding credit to the IMF. For a list of current arrangements since May 1996 (month-end), see http://www.imf.org/external/np/tre/tad/extarr1.cfm. For a list of all members with outstanding financial obligations to the IMF, see http://www.imf.org/external/np/tre/tad/extcred1.cfm.
Status of Commitments of HIPC Assistance (Table 3) Status of the IMF’s commitments to members under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC).
Status of Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative Assistance (Table 4) Status of the MDRI debt relief to eligible member countries that qualified for the assistance.
http://www.imf.org/external/np/tre/activity/2012/071912.htm#tab2a
Posted: November 20, 2011 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, EU, Politics | Tags: European Central Bank, European Union, IMF |
by Boaventura de Sousa Santos 14 November 2011
No more civilities. As it deepened, the European crisis made possible a new radicalism and a new transparency. Up until recently, radical were the positions of those opposing the interventions of the Troika (European Union, European Central Bank and IMF) and its recipes by reason of sovereignty and democracy, or those suspecting that the crisis was the Right’s excuse to implement in Portugal the “schock policies” of privatization, including health and education. In view of the Greek disaster, they proposed noncompliance with the memorandum of agreement, or demanded a public audit of the debt in order to get at the items of illegitimate or even illegal indebtedness. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: June 27, 2011 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: EU, Politics, Society | Tags: IMF, Resistance |
The usurious conditions of the Greek bailout reveals Brussels’ colonial mindset – but Athens is showing citizens can resist
- Costas Douzinas and Petros Papaconstantinou
Parliament and the people … Protesters in Athens’ Syntagma Square, June 2011. Photograph: News Pictures/Rex Features
After months of attacks on the supposedly feckless Greeks, the western media, intellectuals such Amartya Sen and Jürgen Habermas and theUnited Nations have finally woken up to the fact that the catastrophic austerity imposed on Greece is unsustainable. It was about time. This is an unprecedented and morally odious type of collective punishment imposed on a majority of Greeks, who did not see a penny from the profligacy of their rulers and who live close to the poverty line.
The partial acknowledgment of the injustice and unworkability of the austerity measures came only after popular resistance and the peaceful revolt of the indignant scored its first major victory for the anti-austerity and pro-democracy campaign. Syntagma has placed a clear sell-by date on George Papandreou and the elites that ruled Greece for 37 years. The vote of confidence for the reshuffled government bought a limited amount of time, deferring its inevitable collapse. Offering to resign on Wednesday morning and, when his offer was turned down, offering the de facto leadership of the party and government to Evangelos Venizelos, his bitter party enemy, in the evening, Papandreou is a “dead man walking”. While most commentators believe the virtually bankrupt country must default and negotiate a substantial reduction of debt, the government keeps insisting that it will repay every last penny.
Syntagma has become Tahrir Square in slow motion. It is a peaceful, democratic revolt that was easier to start because the fear of brutal repression is smaller, but will be harder to complete as it faces the enormous might of the European Union and global finance capital. Now that the indignant have changed the rules of the political game, it is perhaps time to revisit some basic facts that have been seriously misrepresented. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 18, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Article, Costas Douzinas, European Left, eurozone, Greek left, IMF |
Author: Costas Douzinas*
Few events in recent European political history have baffled analysts and commentators more than the widespread insurrection or ‘riots’ (according to right-wing commentators) that took place in Greece in December 2008. The catalyst was the unprovoked police killing of the 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6 in the Exarcheia district downtown Athens next to the Polytechnic and the Law School, two Universities associated with student militancy for some 60 years. Within hours of Grigoris’s killing, massive protests, occupations and demonstrations broke out all over Greece. Daily marches to police stations, Parliament and Ministries were accompanied by sit-ins, street happenings, interruption of theatres, the raising of a banner calling for resistance on Acropolis and the burning of the Christmas tree in Syntagma Square. Some early violence against banks and luxury shops was minimised and no casualties. In an unprecedented move, large numbers of secondary school pupils occupied some 800 schools and took to the streets. Half the population supported the protest. Solidarity protests throughout Europe created fears of the protests spreading.
The insurrection led to a plethora of anxious interpretations. Many, often contradictory, causes were put forward: economic (unemployment and neo-liberal economic measures), political (persistent corruption and failure of education), cultural or ideological. But the most prominent reaction of commentators has been incomprehension mixed with incredulity.
http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=514
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 15, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, Politics, Society | Tags: Academic article, Alan Cibils, IMF, neoliberalism |
By Alan Cibils | October 20, 2004
There is a popular saying in Argentina: más vale estar solo que mal acompañado(better to be alone than in bad company). Increasingly Argentines are wondering whether it isn’t time to go it alone and leave the International Financial Institutions (IFIs, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank) behind.
Much is at stake for both Argentina and the IMF in the current negotiations. Central issues are Argentina’s defaulted debt renegotiation process, the country’s continued debt payments to the IFIs, and its ability to design and implement economic policies that run contrary to IMF prescriptions but would reduce its appalling levels of hunger, poverty and unemployment.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 15, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, EU, Politics | Tags: Academic article, Europe, Greek economy facts, IMF, neoliberalism |
by Panagiotis Sotiris*
Introduction
During the past months Greece has been the most dramatic example of the current sovereign debt crisis and the first to be forced to introduce an extensive set of policy changes. The package of measures negotiated by the Greek government with the EU, the ECB, and the IMF represent the most aggressive attempt in Europe to violently and rapidly implement ‘structural reforms’ that the forces of capital have been trying for decades to introduce. This has led to an impressive wave of social unrest, that will not be easily subdued especially if we consider that the full impact of the measures has yet to be felt. That is why both the crisis and the measures have acted as a litmus test for the Greek Left and its ability to act as the leading force of social protest and resistance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 14, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, Greek economy facts, Greek left, IMF |
by Alex Callinicos
The price of the so-called “rescue” of Greece is massive austerity for working people. This is coming up against resistance from the most militant working class in Europe.
The general strike on 5 May was very significant. Greece is a country where general strikes happen quite a lot—but this wasn’t just a good general strike. It had qualities of a real workers’ insurgency.
In Constitution Square in the centre of Athens, massive crowds confronted riot police as they tried to get into the parliament.
The struggle is moving beyond the stage where a one-day general strike, or a succession of one-day general strikes, is sufficient to express workers’ anger. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 13, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, Politics | Tags: Costas Douzinas, Costas Lapavitsas, eurozone, Greek economy facts, Greek left, IMF, social Europe |
Eurozone in Crisis: Reform or Exit?
Wednesday 02 June, 6-8pm, RMF and Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Roundtable
Room B33, Birkbeck College, Mallet St. WC1
The event will explore themes from the widely read RMF report ‘Eurozone in Crisis: Beggar Thyself and Thy Neighbour’. It will also contribute to the debate on the social, political and economic aspects of the Eurozone crisis that was launched by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Since the start of 2010 the Eurozone crisis has become progressively deeper, threatening the existence of the euro as well as the coherence of the European Union. The crisis poses questions of economic malfunctioning and austerity policies imposed on several European countries, but also of democracy and state relations within the European Union. The roundtable will consider these issues from a variety of radical perspectives. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 13, 2010 | Author: SOZ | Filed under: Economy, International, Politics, Society | Tags: Article, European Left, Greek economy facts, Greek left, IMF, neoliberalism, Richard Wolff |
by Rick Wolff
Clearly, the global capitalist crisis that started in 2007 will be neither short nor shallow. The government rescue of the US financial industry pumped enough extra money into the economy and sufficiently reduced interest rates to give banks and the stock market the heavily hyped “recovery” that started March 2009 and is now over. What is worse, their recovery never reached much of the rest of the economy. Efforts to broaden the recovery or extend it beyond one limp year have failed. That failure cost Washington trillions in borrowed funds from lenders who now demand guarantees that those loans will be repaid to them with interest. Similar demands now confront many other governments who likewise borrowed heavily to cope with the crisis in their countries. Read the rest of this entry »
