In June 2012, the Cypriot government requested a bailout after its two largest banks took massive losses—around 1.6 billion euros—on Greek government bond write-downs. In order to remain solvent, it was determined that Cyprus needed 17 billion euros in assistance. What Cypriots got was a government claim on their own private bank accounts.
News reports suggest that Tunisia and the IMF are close to coming to terms over a $1.78 billion loan.
Hugo Chavez put an end to the reign of neoliberal IMF policies that had impoverished the masses of Latin America and inaugurated a new order of resource nationalism and income redistribution that favored the poor and the marginalized.
Egyptian protesters are forced to waste precious resources policing each other.
Today many in the developing world continue to be frustrated with the IMF’s structure since it doesn’t reflect the shifting power balance in the global economy.
While the headlines go to Greece, Portugal and Spain, Italy has the second highest rate of debt in Europe and one of the lowest growth rates.
Like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, leading candidate for the IMF directorship Christine Lagarde has skeletons in her closet.
The probability that the next IMF managing director will be yet another European provides an unpleasant lesson about the current state of international affairs. The leading emerging market and developing countries may have gained greater access to the key global economic governance policy-making forums, but they do not yet have the organization or the economic power to prevent the G7 from enforcing their will on international economic matters of most interest to them.
While, in theory, voting shares are supposed to reflect each country’s relative weight in the global economy, political factors – notably Europe’s resistance to giving up its power on both boards – have resulted in over-representation by Western economies, which consequently dominate policy making in both agencies.
The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who has been charged with rape and forced imprisonment of a 32-year-old Guinean hotel worker at a $3,000-a-night luxury hotel in New York, can be seen through the feminist lens of the “personal is political.” As his personal case is being investigated, it is important to point out that the disrespect for women demonstrated by the man at the highest levels of leadership within the IMF is quite consistent with the gender bias inherent in the IMF’s institutional policies and practice.