---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: IRC <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Apr 16, 2007 11:07 PM
Subject: [globalization] IMF Confidence Crisis
To: [log in to unmask]

   [image: Foreign Policy In Focus] Globalization News from FPIF

"A think tank without walls"
http://www.fpif.org/

*Introducing the latest policy analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus*

*IMF Confidence Crisis
*By Soren Ambrose

As International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank officials engage in
their joint semi-annual meetings in Washington, the Fund has a nettlesome
new task: convincing its shareholders (most of the world's governments,
represented at the meeting by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors)
that the institution should continue to exist.

After some 30 years of making "bail-out" and "structural adjustment" loans
to indebted and impoverished countries in return for their adherence to a
long list of neo-liberal economic reforms--trade and investment
deregulation, privatization, tightening access to credit, and rapid budget
cuts and public-sector layoffs, to name a few--the IMF has been confronting
a crisis of confidence for the past two years. Demand for its services has
been shrinking. Its reputation has never recovered from its disastrous
interventions in the East Asian and Argentinean financial crises.

*Soren Ambrose is the coordinator of the Solidarity Africa Network in
Nairobi, Kenya and a contributor to Foreign Policy In
Focus<http://www.fpif.org/>
.*

 *See new FPIF article online at:
http://fpif.org/fpiftxt/4145*
  *For media inquiries* Emily Schwartz Greco, [log in to unmask], 202-297-5412
  Siri Khalsa, [log in to unmask], 505-388-0208

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