Was the Radical Left Correct About the IMF and World Bank?
Alex Gladstein on how "monetary colonialism" has crippled the Third World
HD DownloadThe global movement against free trade and capitalism that burst into public consciousness at the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization coalesced around the idea that Western elites had ensnared Third World nations in a debt trap to coerce them into adopting neoliberal policies.
When poor nations couldn't afford to repay what they owed the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these Washington-based organizations agreed to restructure the loans of debtor countries, if they would agree to move in the direction of privatization, deregulation, and free trade—a policy agenda pejoratively termed "shock therapy."
Leftist leaders like Hugo Chávez claimed that this was part of a pattern of elite subjugation of Latin America that stretched back to Christopher Columbus. He used it as evidence to support Venezuela's turn toward Cuba-style socialism.
Columbia University's Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank and a Nobel Prize–winning critic of free market capitalism, promoted the same narrative. He blamed the Washington Consensus for pushing policies he deemed too radical and wrongheaded to ever get through in the U.S.
Unlike Stiglitz, Alex Gladstein identifies as a classical liberal. The Human Rights Foundation, where he works as chief strategy officer, condemns socialist dictators like Chávez for their crimes against humanity.
Yet in his recent book Hidden Repression: How the IMF and World Bank Sell Exploitation as Development, Gladstein argues that the story told by the radical left about these two organizations is largely correct.
His work over the last few years has focused on "monetary colonialism," in which the U.S. and European nations use their control of global currency to override the sovereignty of poor nations in Latin America and Africa. The fix, he says, is for the world to transition to bitcoin, a form of freedom money that no country or corporation can manipulate or control.
Reason sat down with Gladstein at the Miami Bitcoin Conference in May to talk about his new book.
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Stalin was right about Hitler, Mao was right about Tojo.
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Amazing how “colonialism” always screws over places that went down the path of socialism.
Here are some places that were also subject to colonialism that didn’t go down the socialist path to “prosperity”:
South Korea
Singapore
Taiwan
Malaysia
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Do you remember the meme video of Shinzo Abe feedng fish, then Trump dumping his food in the pond? Edited, of course, to remove Abe dumping his food, and Trump gently feeding the fish, to make Trump look bad.
During that trip, this furor overshadowed one of the most well written speeches on the benefits of free and democratic societies. It was delivered in Seoul and contrasted North Korea, showing the destitute, austere, brutal lifestyle that resulted from 70 years of socialist dictatorship.
You hit the nail on the head here.
Whatever, they don’t have to worry about the IMF now. Instead, they have China’s belt and roads initiative, which is certainly going to be much better for them.
The UK was a Roman colony.
“Hugo Chávez claimed…”
I stopped right there.
Was the Radical Left Correct About the IMF and World Bank?
No. Next question.
The fix, he says, is for the world to transition to bitcoin, a form of freedom money that no country or corporation can manipulate or control.
Stealing and reversing a bit from Sandra; I like anti-capitalists better when they don’t identify as classical liberals and suggest that the problem with capitalism is the capital.
Bitcoin, being a currency, doesn’t pave the roads, build the hospitals, and build out the broadband required for its own transmission. The only way Bitcoin would do what is claimed is if it’s viewed not as a means for people to freely contract between each other, but as a means to transfer assets and accumulated wealth from richer to poorer countries. One would presume that a Classical Liberal, favoring individual (national) autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, and political freedom, would recognize that poorer nations should’ve built the roads, hospitals, and broadband themselves rather than take out the loans at all, let alone welsh on the debt and get pissy when the terms they violated get renegotiated.
Just watched a Cuba free fall video as the U.S. reporter asked: Why doesn’t anyone in the international community seem to care”. The reply from a black, female Cuban was that ideology trumps human suffering. Socialism is an extreme zealot secular religion, even as you watch people starve.
So instead of building roads, infrastructure, etc, poor countries should simply use all their energy (literally) mining bit coin and then use the bit coin to buy stuff?
Bitcoin is amazing! It also cures gout and AIDS!
Bitcoin sure- it’s almost like you don’t need electricity or internet connections. Bitcoin runs on President Polis rolling blackouts and internet speed throttles.
When poor nations couldn’t afford to repay what they owed the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these Washington-based organizations agreed to restructure the loans of debtor countries, if they would agree to move in the direction of privatization, deregulation, and free trade—a policy agenda pejoratively termed “shock therapy.”
BS. The IMF and the World Bank, which ARE NOT Washington based, were created to move AWAY from private free trade and toward regulation.
For sound economic perspective go to https://honesteconomics.substack.com/
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