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INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF)
"It is easy to criticise high profile organisations like the IMF. Easy to point to their failures. Easy to pick up on the catch cries of those who oppose anything with the name international. It is not so easy for those same critics to show how they would do such a massive and complex job better." Lyn Vickery.
IMF SAVIOR OR DEVOURING MONSTER?
184 member nations make up this massive organisation.
The tasks that confront the International Monetary Fund in some third world countries are daunting to say the least. Unstable regimes, centuries of endemic lies and corruption at all levels, religious obstacles and an unswerving determination on the part of some heads of government to rip off the system all combine to make the IMF's task thankless.
Much of the popular critism of the IMF centers around debt restructuring and the main problem here is the extent of debt in weaker countries and the IMF's lack of a strong legal basis upon which to act. This wastes time and often allows debt levels to climb further before restructuring can take effect.
The IMF's website states the following:
"Currently, the international financial system lacks a strong legal framework for the predictable and orderly structuring of sovereign debt, which drives the cost of default even higher. The IMF is trying to create a framework for an equitable debt restructuring that restores sustainability and growth, without including incentives that unintentionally increase the risk of default."
In broad terms GLOBAL ACTION supports the wide ranging work of the IMF in developing and third world nations.
In many cases the problems attributed to the IMF in relation to developed nations such as Australia are more the failings and policy aberrations of the major countries that influence its direction or our own past leadership's naivety.
Nations such as Australia are mature enough politically and economically to identify and resist those parts of IMF policy that do not apply or which have negative effects. We do not have to blindly follow the leader as has occurred in the past. See Economic Rationalism, Deregulation and Free Trade.
More details on the IMF will be posted soon on the GLOBAL ACTION INTERNATIONAL section of this website.
IMF WEBSITE: http://www.imf.org/
Also see: ECONOMY ECONOMIC RATIONALISM
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