Meet the New IMF, Same as the Old IMF

by Kurt Nimmo - Oct 4, 2007

Leave it to a socialist to provide the International Monetary Fund with its new agenda, basically the same old agenda.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance and economics minister in French politician Lionel Jospin’s “Plural Left” government, “said overhauls he intends for the IMF will allow it to adapt to ‘a new balance of power in the world’ and ‘to the new kind of financial crisis’ that has hit financial markets recently,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Of course, this supposed “new balance of power in the world” is the same old balance of power, that is to say the same old neoliberal principles are at work, albeit with a shiny new veneer designed to trick the public, as usual.

Strauss-Kahn tells us he will “give more representation to emerging countries” and “emerging economies, such as China, India and Brazil,” in other words the Chinese “economic miracle” will remain front and center as the plan is to reduce much of the planet to a forced labor gulag where subsistence, or sub-subsistence, for billions of people will be rule of the day as they crank out cheap goods contaminated with heavy metals or cough syrup containing diethylene glycol, that is to say anti-freeze.

Experience is everything, and Strauss-Kahn received his at the Center on Socialist Education Studies and Research and later earned his chops as commissaire-adjoint at the Commissariat au plan. So promising was Dominique, he was appointed prime minister of the Group of Experts of the Socialist Party and Raymond Lévy, then director of Renault, took a shining to him and paved the way for his installment in the Cercle de l’Industrie, a multinational lobbying group. Even the lukewarm altermondialisme, or Alter-globalization movement, itself a socialist manifestation, took exception to Strauss-Kahn.

Meanwhile, as if running a global loan sharking operation is not enough, German president Horst Köhler, a former IMF appointee and facilitator of G7 “summits,” declared “that the International Monetary Fund should be given more power to regulate the world’s financial markets” as part of the “new balance of power in the world,” or maybe it should be called what it is—a naked power grab by the bankers and investment class now that the Bretton Woods system is in full collapse, due mostly to fiat currency and budget deficit “problems,” designed to “level the playing field,” that is say eventually usher in the “Chinese miracle” here in the United States.

“The world needs ‘an independent, competent institution with responsibility beyond national borders for the stability of the international financial system,’ said Koehler in his annual address to the German parliament in Berlin. ‘This task could be given to the IMF,’ said the German president, who is a former IMF managing director.”

No conflict of interest here, not that most Germans would know the difference, as they are now nearly as distracted and domesticated as their American counterparts.

Köhler “called for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to summon a meeting of heads of world bodies to draft guidelines for cooperation…. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been urging more regulations on the global financial markets, particularly on the hedge funds, but the world’s leaders failed to reach an agreement during the G8 summit of the industrial nations in June in Germany.”

It makes perfect sense these minions of the European Union now demand “more regulations on the global financial markets,” although we can translate this as less regulation and more concentration of wealth in the so-called “financial markets,” basically an economic snake oil caravan designed to extract every last iota of wealth, impoverish billions, and hold fire sales with the remains of decimated countries, many regarded as “failed states,” thanks to Strauss-Kahn’s IMF and the World Bank.

As Susan George wrote well before the current crop of one-worlders played musical chairs, the story of the IMF is one of debt and misery. “Debt is an efficient tool. It ensures access to other peoples’ raw materials and infrastructure on the cheapest possible terms. Dozens of countries must compete for shrinking export markets and can export only a limited range of products because of Northern protectionism and their lack of cash to invest in diversification. Market saturation ensues, reducing exporters’ income to a bare minimum while the North enjoys huge savings. The IMF cannot seem to understand that investing in … [a] healthy, well-fed, literate population … is the most intelligent economic choice a country can make.” Translate the “North” to Wall Street and the Bank of England and you have the whole story, minus the gruesome details of billions of people forced to live on a dollar or two a day, thanks to IMF “Structural Adjustment Policies.”