IMF-Who the hell are these guys?

Darlughda

Well, I am curious to know what are the opinions from the genuine truth seekers on this forum?

I don't like this idea of an IMF, is this some kind of rockefeller backed industry that is working towards EU domination?

In fairness, noone is able to put forward any kind of theory of where this kind of sovereignty overblow can lead us?

What is the story with this IMF stuff?

Brown Bomber

Darlughda wrote: »

Well, I am curious to know what are the opinions from the genuine truth seekers on this forum?

I don't like this idea of an IMF, is this some kind of rockefeller backed industry that is working towards EU domination?

In fairness, noone is able to put forward any kind of theory of where this kind of sovereignty overblow can lead us?

What is the story with this IMF stuff?

IMF is worst case scenario. Think of the volatile bannana republics, the end of true democracy, government dictated by corporate international special interests, austerity, privatisation of government utilities etc.

Not that I take any pleasure in this but when I told people a couple of years ago that the IMF ultimately could be called into Ireland they laughed. So much for conspiracy theories, best stick with Sky News.

swoofer

The IMF are called in as a last resort to sort out a mess made by the government in power, if FF had lost the last election they would have been laughing all the way to the bank!!(sorry) so let's be gratefull for small mercies in the shower that caused the sinkhole are right in it themselves. A finance minister with no bank (sorry) account!! Read Matt Coopers book and weep. As an example of gross incompetence , merril lynch were paid 5.5million or to tell this shower " yes you have to give a bank guarantee "!! I rest my case

noah

Divorce Referendum

Brown Bomber wrote: »

IMF is worst case scenario. Think of the volatile bannana republics, the end of true democracy, government dictated by corporate international special interests, austerity, privatisation of government utilities etc.

Not that I take any pleasure in this but when I told people a couple of years ago that the IMF ultimately could be called into Ireland they laughed. So much for conspiracy theories, best stick with Sky News.

Two years ago it was plainly obvious that this would happen. Thats why I cleared of to the UK myself for a year and half to try and keep in employment and save some money. I am surprised people laughed because at that stage the smile had been wiped off alot of their faces.

Brown Bomber

Divorce Referendum wrote: »

Two years ago it was plainly obvious that this would happen. Thats why I cleared of to the UK myself for a year and half to try and keep in employment and save some money. I am surprised people laughed because at that stage the smile had been wiped off alot of their faces.

Must be longer then. My brain is not so good on long term memory, damaged it too much in the 90's and 00's. It was before Bear Stearns went tits up, not long before.

CamperMan

these guys are going to cornhole this country!

Divorce Referendum

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Must be longer then. My brain is not so good on long term memory, damaged it too much in the 90's and 00's. It was before Bear Stearns went tits up, not long before.

Those were the good old days . Ah well in fairness you arent far off I think Bear Stearns went in march 2008. I left Pierse contracting in october and the three weeks later there was a mass cull and 250 redundancies. I think Lehmann had just gone a few weeks before I left. I suppose everything happened so quick.

I just looked at the list of countries that are indebted to the IMF. We will be in strange company.

My name is URL

Darlughda wrote: »

Well, I am curious to know what are the opinions from the genuine truth seekers on this forum?

I don't like this idea of an IMF, is this some kind of rockefeller backed industry that is working towards EU domination?

In fairness, noone is able to put forward any kind of theory of where this kind of sovereignty overblow can lead us?

What is the story with this IMF stuff?

They're the gatekeepers of Hell. Nah.. I don't understand the whole thing well enough to say whether or not they work for Satan. I know that they don't have our best interests at heart though, and that they are more interested in protecting currency delaying the collapse of our failing currency than about the growth or wellbeing of individual nations.



The worst thing about all of this to me is that we're a laughing stock of the rest of Europe.. and will be for quite some time, compounding our problems even further.

Look at this articles comments - ... pure vile. And the saddest part is that Irish people will say 'sure we deserve it'

We're being fcuked 4 ways from Tuesday.. by our own lot, the ECB pumping debt into Ireland for the sake of the Euro, the bondholders who'll continue to profit from it all and the media propagating the notion that we as a people had it coming and should suffer for it.

Run_to_da_hills

I also mentioned about the IMF being called into this country two years ago. (If I could dig up the thread), was ridiculed and told that we were a long way from it. How things have changed.

The IMF are the same shower that have been crippling 3rd world countries for decades, with strict t&c's on any of their their loans. They dictate to governments on how they want the country run.

I believe it will be this shower that will eventually force governments across the world with the introduction of smart cards and the cashless currency that can be used to track and trace all transactions in the name of eliminating the black economy, revenue fraud and securing their loans.

Mary Stewart Relph predicted IMF take over of nations in the western world over 30 years ago in the book the "New Money system".........The wolf is now at our doorstep.

Brown Bomber

Darlughda wrote: »

Well, I am curious to know what are the opinions from the genuine truth seekers on this forum?

I don't like this idea of an IMF, is this some kind of rockefeller backed industry that is working towards EU domination?

In fairness, noone is able to put forward any kind of theory of where this kind of sovereignty overblow can lead us?

What is the story with this IMF stuff?

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.
At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas.

This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.
And it is.

What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.
That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.


Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade.
This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.

Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.'

Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.
Why didn't the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?
'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2001/apr/29/business.mbas

If you want to find out more - http://www.scribd.com/doc/42237599/The-Best-Democracy-Money-Can-Buy-By-Greg-Palast

Di0genes

Brown Bomber wrote: »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2001/apr/29/business.mbas

If you want to find out more - http://www.scribd.com/doc/42237599/The-Best-Democracy-Money-Can-Buy-By-Greg-Palast

it may shock and surprise people but my signed copy of

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/aug/15/globalization-stiglitzs-case/

has pride of place on my bookshelf.

gizmo

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I also mentioned about the IMF being called into this country two years ago. (If I could dig up the thread), was ridiculed and told that we were a long way from it. How things have changed.

This is why...

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

I believe it will be this shower that will eventually force governments across the world with the introduction of smart cards and the cashless currency that can be used to track and trace all transactions in the name of eliminating the black economy, revenue fraud and securing their loans.

The IMF may have ****ed up other countries in the past but they have never done the above.

Brown Bomber

Eric Cantona - "kill the banks"

sligopark

Darlughda wrote: »

Well, I am curious to know what are the opinions from the genuine truth seekers on this forum?

I don't like this idea of an IMF, is this some kind of rockefeller backed industry that is working towards EU domination?

In fairness, noone is able to put forward any kind of theory of where this kind of sovereignty overblow can lead us?

What is the story with this IMF stuff?

who and what makes up this IMF?

zod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKRKZqdgBXg

Darlughda

Thanks all for replies.

Good ole' wikepeida was able to give me the general ladybird book overview I was looking for. Especially in regard to criticisms of the IMF. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund


Nonetheless, thanks for that link to that book, Brown Bomber. My poor lil' head just cant take that level of economic info right now, but one I will come back to.

Zod. Thanks for the youtube links, haven't watched them all yet. The first 2 mins freaked the shyte outta me.

Di0genes

Darlughda wrote: »

Nonetheless, thanks for that link to that book, Brown Bomber. My poor lil' head just cant take that level of economic info right now, but one I will come back to.
.

No don't sell you yourself short, it's good easy to understand book on economics and the IMF.

The week the IMF comes in is precisely the time you should be reading this book.

Well actually the time to read it was before the last general election, where people who knew about the possibility that the IMF was on the way.

symboybot

Greed is the ultimate evil and the doom of our species.

robtri

OK beside telling us that the IMF are the devil incarnate...

does anybody have a list of any of the actual demands the IMF have made that are unreasonable???

mickdw

Well the problem I have with this funding (not so much the IMF) is that it is being pumped in here to save the euro. This level of cutbacks is not the way to help the economy recover, it is just a mechanism to weather the storm threatening collapse of the currency. Once they can get the euro on a secure footing, they wont care that Ireland is left with billions in bank debt to pay off, bank debt that only became national debt again to prevent collapse of the euro. I think this debt should have been in the form of EU funding straight into the banks and perhaps the debts arrising from many areas being paid back gradually by every european citizen in some form of tax.
What I can imagine happening is that the further this bank crisis goes, the more out of hand the figures will be resulting in an EU wide tax to fund this. Of course Ireland would have to pay this too as well as already having taken on the burden of more than strictly Irish debt

Run_to_da_hills

My signature explains Ireland under IMF policy.

Yitzhak Rabin

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

My signature explains Ireland under IMF policy.

But... you don't have a signature...