Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
financial flows

Developing Countries, Global Financial Governance, and the Group of Twenty

by | Nov 1, 2001

The Group of Twenty (G-20) will meet in Ottawa in mid-November, the third meeting since the group was created in 1999. In addition to the G-8 (G-7 plus Russia), the membership of the G-20 consists of: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and, oddly, two institutional representatives–one for the European Union and one for the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank).

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The Argentine Crisis as Coup de Grace?

by | Sep 1, 2001

For most of the past decade Argentina had been the poster child of the IMF and Wall Street. No developing country in the 1990s had opened its financial markets more avidly, or privatized its state assets more fervidly. These structural reforms were supported by monetary reforms in 1991 that legally froze the peso/dollar exchange rate and tightly tied the money supply to the changing stock of hard currency reserves. To further gain Wall Street confidence, the Argentine government in 1991 announced a major foreign policy shift from nonalignment to an all-out pro-U.S. position–“in carnal embrace,” Foreign Minister Guido Di Tella sardonically put it.

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The IMF and Argentina’s Spiraling Crisis

by | Sep 1, 2001

“After our trip to Buenos Aires,” the investment firm of Merrill Lynch announced in early July, “our main impression is that the risks of a spiraling of the crisis in Argentina have increased.” Investors took the warning to heart. On July 11, in its efforts to raise funds on the bond market, the Argentine government was forced to offer interest rates of 14% on its three month bonds; only two weeks earlier, investors had demanded only 9% for similar bonds.

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Strategy and Self-Activity In the Global Justice Movements

by | Aug 1, 2001

Let us take as a starting point that the broadly consensual strategy and basis for self-activity in what we can term Global Justice Movements is the following: to promote the globalization of people and halt (or at minimum radically modify) the globalization of capital. But this strategy conflicts with the objectives of at least four other tendencies that also appear to have solidified in recent years. Since the full-blown emergence of an international financial crisis around mid-1997, the world has witnessed a revival of Third World Nationalism, a Post-Washington Consensus reform option, obstinacy on the part of Washington Consensus powerbrokers, and a formidable Rightwing Resurgence.

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Why We Must Open the Meetings of the IMF and World Bank Boards: The Case of User Fees on Primary Healthcare in Tanzania

by | Jun 1, 2001

One of the most controversial “structural adjustment” policies promoted by the World Bank and the IMF is the imposition of user fees on primary healthcare and education. These user fees have been associated with lower school enrollment and reduced access to primary healthcare. For some years, the World Bank, while acknowledging problems with the implementation of user fees, defended them in principle on the grounds that there were, or were supposed to be, exemptions for the poor, even though, as the World Bank was eventually forced to admit, the track record indicates that exemption schemes do not work.

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Republican Rule and the IFIs

by | Dec 1, 2000

For the first time in eight years the Republican Party will represent the U.S. at the international financial institutions (IFIs). The way a Bush-Cheney administration approaches recommendations made by the Meltzer Commission on the IFIs and the way it views foreign assistance and economic development will shape the positions the U.S. takes regarding the IFIs. So will the identities of the next treasury secretary, IFI executive directors, and chairs of relevant congressional committees. And though all these factors remain uncertain, one thing is clear: the new political climate will present both challenges and opportunities for advocacy groups.

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We Do Guns–Not Plagues

by | Nov 1, 2000

We now face, with the global spread of AIDS, a human catastrophe that is beyond history. We have never witnessed anything so devastating. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is a pandemic that threatens to exceed the toll that the Bubonic Plague took on Europe in ushering in the Dark Ages. 23 million people are infected in Sub-Saharan Africa, with new infections coming at the rate of roughly five thousand a day.

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Money Talks: The Implications of U.S. Budget Priorities

by , | Sep 1, 1999

According to a recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations, “[T]he average American believes we spend 18% of the federal budget on foreign affairs, while thinking we should spend only 6%. In reality, foreign affairs spending, the bully pulpit of America’s strength overseas, is now only 1% of the federal budget–a little more than one penny of every federal tax dollar.” 1

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