The Fund concentrates on "macro-policies," such as fiscal and monetary policies or exchange rates, and pays little attention to fundamental issues like private property rights and freedom of enterprise. Implicit ... is the belief that with proper "macro-management" any economic system is viable....
Even more important, it has allowed governments the world overto expropriate the wealth of their citizens more efficiently (through thehidden tax of inflation) while at the same time aggrandizing their ownpower. There is little doubt that the IMF is an influence for world-widesocialism.1
An important feature of the Structural-Adjustment Loans is that the money need not be applied to any specific development project.
It can be spent for anything the recipient wishes. That includes interest payments on overdue bank loans. Thus, the World Bank becomes yet one more conduit from the pockets of taxpayers to the assets of commercial banks which have made risky loans to Third-World countries.
AUSTERITY MEASURES AND SCAPEGOATS
Not every measure advocated by the IMF and World Bank is
socialistic. Some of them even appear to be in support of the private sector, such as the reduction of government subsidies and welfare.
They may include tax increases to reduce budget deficits. These policy changes are often described in the press as "austerity measures," and they are seen as hard-nosed business decisions to salvage the failing economies of underdeveloped countries. But, as the wolf (in sheep's clothing) said to Little Red-Riding-Hood, "All the better to fool you with, my dear." These austerity measures are meetly rhetoric. The borrowing nations usually ignore the conditions with impunity, and the World Bank keeps the money coming anyway. It's all part of the game.
Nevertheless, the "structural-adjustment" conditions provide a scapegoat for local politicians who can now place the blame for their nation's misery on big, bad "capitalists" from America and the IMF. People who have been taught that it is government's role to provide for their welfare, their health care, their food and housing, 1 "The International Monetary Fund," by Ken S. Ewert,
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98 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
their jobs and retirement—such people will not be happy when they hear that these "rights" are being threatened. So they demonstrate in the streets in protest, they riot in the commercial sections of town so they can steal goods from stores, and they throng to the banner of leftist politicians who promise to restore or increase their benefits. As described by
National strikes, riots, political upheavals and social unrest in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Haiti, Liberia, Peru, Sudan and elsewhere have at various times been attributed to IMF austerity programs....
Some came to the fund with domestic trouble already brewing and seized on the fund as a convenient scapegoat.1
Quite true. An honest reading of the record shows that the IMF, far from being a force for austerity in these countries, has been an engine of socialist waste and a fountain of abundance for the corrupt leaders who rule.
FINANCING CORRUPTION AND DESPOTISM
Nowhere is this pattern more blatant than in Africa. Julius Nyerere, the dictator of Tanzania, is notorious for his "villagiza-tion" program in which the army has driven the peasants from their land, burned their huts, and loaded them like cattle into trucks for relocation into government villages. The purpose is to eliminate opposition by bringing everyone into compounds where they can be watched and controlled. Meanwhile the economy staggers, farms have gone to weed, and hunger is commonplace. Yet,
Tanzania has received more aid per capita from the World Bank than any other nation.
In Uganda, government security forces have engaged in mass detentions, torture, and killing of prisoners. The same is true under the terrorist government in Zimbabwe. Yet, both regimes continue to be the recipients of millions of dollars in World Bank funding.
