Международный валютный фонд и все-все-все

[groul]

Поскольку это раздел экономики, я буду скидывать в эту тему не столь лестную информацию о деятельности Международного валютного фонда и Всемирного Банка.

[groul]

Газета Вашингтон Пост писала, что в аргентинском кризисе «[повсюду видны] отпечатки пальцев МВФ».

Argentina's Crisis, IMF's Fingerprints

By Mark Weisbrot

Tuesday, December 25, 2001; Page A33

As Argentina's government was resigning in the face of full-scale riots and protests from every sector of society, a BBC-TV reporter asked me whether this economic and political meltdown would change the way people viewed the International Monetary Fund. I wanted to say yes, but I had to tell him: "It really depends on how the media reports these events."

So far it looks as if the IMF is getting off easy, once again. The Fund and the World Bank -- the world's two most powerful financial institutions -- learned an important lesson from their brief spate of bad publicity during the Asian economic crisis a few years ago. They have become masters of the art of "spinning" the news.

Argentina's implosion has the IMF's fingerprints all over it. The first and overwhelmingly most important cause of the country's economic troubles was the government's decision to maintain its fixed rate of exchange: one peso for one U.S. dollar. Adopted in 1991, this policy worked for awhile. But over the past few years, the U.S. dollar has been overvalued. This made the Argentine peso overvalued as well.

Contrary to popular belief, a "strong" currency is not like a strong body. It is very easy to have too much of a good thing. An overvalued currency makes a country's exports too expensive and its imports artificially cheap. Just look at the United States, where our "strong" dollar has brought us a record $400 billion trade deficit.

But it gets catastrophically worse for a country that has committed itself -- as Argentina has -- to a fixed exchange rate. When investors start to believe that the peso is going to fall, they demand ever higher interest rates. These exorbitant interest rates are crippling to the economy. This is the main reason Argentina has not been able to recover from its 4-year-old recession.

To maintain an overvalued currency, a country needs large reserves of dollars: The government has to guarantee that everyone who wants to exchange a peso for a dollar can get one. The IMF's role here was crucial: It arranged massive amounts of loans -- including $40 billion a year ago -- to support the Argentine peso.

This was the IMF's second fatal error. To appreciate its severity, imagine the United States borrowing $1.4 trillion -- 70 percent of our federal budget -- just to prop up our overvalued dollar. It didn't take long for Argentina to pile up a foreign debt that was literally impossible to pay back.

As if all that weren't enough, the Fund made its loans conditional on a "zero-deficit" policy for the Argentine government. But it is neither necessary nor desirable for a government to balance its budget during a recession, when tax revenues typically fall and social spending rises.

The "zero-deficit" target may make little economic sense, but it has great public relations value. By focusing on government spending, the IMF has managed to convince most of the press that Argentina's "profligate" spending habits are the source of its troubles. But Argentina has run only modest budget deficits, much smaller than our own deficits during recessions.

The IMF now claims that it was against the fixed exchange rate, and the massive loans to support it, all along. Fund officials say they went along with these policies to please the Argentine government. So now Argentina tells the U.S. government what to do! This is not a very credible story, but of course verifying who made what decision is a little like tracking the chain of command at al Qaeda. IMF board meetings, consultations with government ministers and other deliberations are secret.

But they do have a track record. In 1998 the Fund supported overvalued currencies in Russia and Brazil, with massive loans and sky-high interest rates. In both cases the currencies collapsed anyway, and both countries were better off for the devaluation: Russia's growth in 2000 was its highest in two decades.

Argentina will undoubtedly recover too, after it devalues its currency and defaults on its unpayable foreign debt. But the people will need a government that is willing to break with the IMF and pursue policies that put their own national interests first.

Washington has other ideas. "It's important for Argentina to continue to work through the International Monetary Fund on sound policies," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on Friday. For the IMF, failure is impossible.

The writer is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

-------------------------

Источник: Вашингтон Пост

[free]

материала много найдешь.

интересно будет почитать.

[groul]

Версия событий от IMF: Anne Krueger: Crisis Prevention and Resolution: Lessons from Argentina

The Fund is often accused of being too tough on fiscal policy, a line of criticism that was much in evidence in the early days of the Asian crisis. But in Argentina's case the opposite was true. Fiscal problems in Latin America have often arisen when complacency has set in during booms. This was the same old story—and the Fund should have been more forceful in urging action. Having said this, it is never easy to persuade authorities of the need to tighten their belts when foreign investors and lenders are providing an apparent vote of confidence by pouring capital in.

[groul]

Согласно одному пакистанскому автору, Аргентина послушно следовала всем указаниям МВФ, за что и поплатилась:

Argentina is a prime example of a country that followed the policy recommendations of the IMF to the letter and now that the country is economically, politically and socially a complete basket case, the IMF has, as in other cases, abdicated all responsibility.

[free]

The IMF now claims that it was against the fixed exchange rate, and the massive loans to support it, all along.Fund officials say they went along with these policies to please the Argentine government. .....

[Mono]

Впервые МВФ дает убытки, именно из за того что многие страны сворочивают соотрудничество с этим банком

After the two South American countries, who happened to be the IMF’s largest borrowers, set the example, others followed. Serbia, Indonesia, Uruguay, and the Philippines made similar announcements. With the addition of Indonesia to the list, three of the four largest debtors to the IMF had liberated themselves. The fourth, Turkey, is reportedly considering taking the same step before the end of 2007. With all these early repayments, and the gathering certainty that virtually no “middle-income countries” would be giving the IMF more business, it soon appeared that the IMF might face a crisis of solvency. Indeed, the institution is expected to post its first loss in decades -- about $100 million -- this year.

http://www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=472046

[groul]

Грул,

что скажешь на этот параграф?

[Таронеци]

Если турки всерьёз хотят в Евросоюз, их нужно обязать плотнее работать с МВФ, шире внедрять его программы.

[groul]

«В 90-е годы Россия барахталась, словно в болоте, и одним из главных виновников бедствий страны был Международный валютный фонд. Директивы МВФ (высокие налоги и слабая национальная валюта) – это формула катастрофы», – согласился Стив Форбс, глава корпорации Форбс, в интервью «Российским вестям».

[Mono]

CARTELS: ECONOMISTS AND CENTRAL BANKERS

A cartel is an organization made up of senior managers or

their representatives in an industry. Established members of an

industry fear competition from newcomers. Newcomers will cut

prices and thereby reduce existing companies' profit margins.

So, cartels seek government protection against newcomers. In

this quest, they give lots of money to politicians' campaigns.

Then, having bought access, they seek to persuade politicians to

establish legal barriers to entry in their industry. These

barriers are imposed in the name of the public interest. Their

justification is that they raise standards of production. The

sales pitch is this: "Higher standards require higher prices."

In any textbook on introductory economics, the author

includes one or more chapters on the phenomenon of the

cartelization of industries and professions. Economists discuss

cartels and monopolies in terms of government intervention into

the free market.

Cartels are created by legislation which is defended in the

name the public interest. Economists generally are suspicious of

claims that invoke the public interest. All modern economic

theory, beginning with Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" (1776),

begins with this presupposition: "Individuals act in their self-

interest, however each individual defines his self-interest."

Smith was hostile to business cartels. He had nothing good to

say about such associations.

In general, self-interest is defined as the pursuit of

money, although the economist will add a few sentences on self-

interest as encompassing more than money. But if you read an

economic textbook, it's mostly about money. It is filled with

graphs: price (Y axis) and quantity (X axis).

Economics as a science is seen by its practitioners as

having progressed by identifying more and more institutions as

governed by personal self-interest. Yet when economists come to

banking and education, they refuse to extend this traditional

analysis. They either remain silent or invoke the mantra of

public interest.

You will search in vain for a chapter on education as an

oligopoly within the context of tax-funding, laws mandating

education up to age 16, and government licensing of college-

accreditation agencies. Somehow, economics textbook authors skip

over any analytical discussion of this, the largest sector of the

American economy.

CENTRAL BANKS AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST

There is a chapter on central banking. Here, the entire

conceptual apparatus which the author used in the other chapters

is quietly abandoned. Yet there is no doubt, analytically

speaking, that a central bank is a government-licensed monopoly.

Yet the author never uses this word to explain central banking in

general or the Federal Reserve System in particular. If there is

an exception to this rule, I have not seen it.

In the other chapters, economic textbooks describe how

special-interest business groups organize to pressure the

government to intervene into market pricing, so that existing

businesses are favored at the expense of those kept out by

government-created barriers to entry. They show how this

restricts the freedom of new producers to offer consumers better

deals. It also restricts existing producers from offering

discounts or other arrangements to consumers.

Free market economists generally argue that all cartels

break down over time because of "cheating" -- in a non-pejorative

sense-- takes place. Consumers eventually persuade cartel

members to cheat by offering better deals. None of this is

applied to central banking. Yet it explains the push toward

international central banking and currency unions.

Furthermore, textbooks explain the Federal Reserve System as

an organization created by politicians and run by disinterested

economists and commercial bankers whose goal is to serve the

public interest. How does it do this? Through expert scientific

economic analysis which the voters do not possess. Because the

central bank is legally semi-independent from the government that

created it, this hampers voters from influencing monetary policy

through the Congress or the President.

As faithful defenders of democracy, the authors would

affirm: "Military affairs are too important to be left to the

generals." Yet they mentally affirm this position: "Monetary

affairs are too important NOT to be left to central bankers."

(They would do much the same with higher education, if they

included a chapter on education, which they don't.) They refuse

to say this openly, because the blatant inconsistency of their

position -- generals vs. central bankers -- would become evident,

but this is the operating presupposition which undergirds every

college-level economics textbook.

What we never see is the chapter on central banking in the

section of the textbook on "Monopoly, Oligopoly, and Cartels."

Yet there is nothing analytically that separates the monopoly of

central banking from any other government-licensed monopoly.

There is nothing conceptually that distinguishes the cartel of

commercial banking from any other cartel.

A few of the authors may have written articles or

specialized books on one of these two issues, in which they apply

the presumption of self-interest to education or central banking.

But when we read their textbooks, we find no such analysis.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL

An enquiring person might ask this: "What is the economic

self-interest of textbook publishers?" The obvious answer: "To

sell a lot of textbooks at the normal mark-up of ten to one."

But no economics textbook ever asks this. (Don't ask. Don't

tell.)

The next question: "How is it that the only segments of the

book publishing industry that has a ten-to-one mark-up are the

textbook market and the market for academic books bought only by

university libraries?" (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a section in the chapter on oligopoly on the

textbook industry as an oligopoly within the framework of an

academic economic cartel. (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a section on government-licensed regional

accreditation agencies as barriers to entry against new

universities. (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a chapter on tax-funded education within the

context of (1) self-interested politicians in the market for

votes and (2) self-interested, university-certified professors

seeking above-market salaries. (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a chapter on fractional reserve banking as a

form of fraud, in which depositors are promised that they can get

their money on demand at any time. (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a chapter on fractional reserve banking as

theft, in which holders of money lose purchasing power through

monetary inflation's effect: higher prices. (Don't ask. Don't

tell.)

There is never a chapter on the Federal Reserve System in

terms of the what the textbooks say is the supreme economic

issue: the self-interest of the promoters of the Federal Reserve

Act. (Don't ask. Don't tell.)

There is never a section on the Federal Reserve System as a

government-licensed monopoly which was created because of

political pressure put on politicians by commercial bankers as a

way to protect fractionally reserved commercial banks from

bankruptcy resulting from their depositors' bank runs. (Don't

ask. Don't tell.)

SILENCE IS GOLDEN, UNLIKE FIAT MONEY

We are all familiar with such sayings as these: "Don't bite

the hand that feeds you." "He who pays the piper calls the

tune." "If you take the king's shilling, you do the king's

bidding." These are all consistent with the principle of

economic self-interest.

The textbook publishing companies do not hand academic

economists a form in which they are instructed not to write a

chapter on the economics of education. The committees of peers

who read submitted manuscripts do not reject manuscripts because

authors included such a chapter. The system is more subtle than

this.

Textbooks are supposed to cover only what is relevant to

first-year students. A textbook cannot cover everything. So, it

must skip over topics. The litmus test of orthodoxy is not just

how certain topics are covered. It is also which topics are not

covered. The economics profession considers the question of tax-

funded education and accreditation as beyond the interest of the

profession. So, textbooks avoid the topic. Only in monographs

and journal articles are such topics ever covered.

If there is a university press monograph written by a Ph.D.-

holding economist that attacks all tax-funded education on the

basis of the State's coercion as misallocating resources, I have

never come across it. A free market economist's argument at best

recommends vouchers: the economic equivalent of food stamps that

are used to pay for pre-collegiate educational services supplied

by State-certified schools. Vouchers are the economist's attempt

to provide parental choice in a world of compulsory attendance

laws and confiscated tax money. His goal is this: "to gain an

increased degree of economic efficiency and personal freedom in a

world of universal and unquestionable educational coercion." In

short, the economist wants to improve a system which rests on

people in uniforms who stick guns in citizens' bellies.

You will find no article in a peer-reviewed journal favoring

tax money going to churches. You will also find no article in a

peer-reviewed journal favoring the closing of all tax-funded

schools. Yet, analytically speaking, there is no difference

between tax-funded churches and tax-funded schools. It was no

accident that Massachusetts in 1833 was the last state to outlaw

tax-funded churches, and four years later established America's

first tax-funded public school system.

THE WORLD OF TEXTBOOKS

What about banking? To leave out a discussion of money and

banking would be inconceivable in an economics textbooks. So,

the publishers follow the guidelines of the committees.

Textbook committees are made up of senior academicians who

have risen in their fields in terms of a screening process. This

screening process begins in college: the introductory course. It

extends to upper division, then graduate school, then the tenure-

granting process. Certain questions in each academic discipline

are not subject to questioning. Examples:

Astronomy: the Big Bang

Biology: evolution through natural selection

American history: Lincoln and F.D. Roosevelt as visionaries

Economics: the necessity of central banking

Whenever a professor challenges a central presupposition of

his academic guild, he will be relegated out outer darkness:

teaching undergraduates, or worse, teaching lower division

students.

Such was the fate of Murray Rothbard through most of his

career. He not only denied the legitimacy of central banking, he

also demonstrated that it was fraudulent, a monopoly protecting a

cartel, and the creator of the boom-bust economic cycle. He

wrote what no other economist had ever written, an upper

division-level textbook on money and banking that demonstrated

all of these points. No textbook publishing company would touch

it. It was published by a tiny, short-lived company that was

owned by a hard money newsletter publisher. Its title was

guaranteed to kill college sales: "The Mystery of Banking." It

went out of print within a year or two. Only because of the web

can you obtain it today. It's offered as a free download. I

wrote the Foreword.

http://GaryNorth.com/snip/214.htm

So, anyone in a position to write an economics textbook

knows what is required before he begins writing. He looks at

half a dozen textbooks to see what is covered and what isn't.

Then he begins his outline.

He knows there will be a screening committee hired by the

publisher. He knows that a committee will veto any textbook that

breaks with what is representative in the profession. He knows

that textbooks are not supposed to be creative. They are

supposed to be adopted in as many schools as possible. He also

knows that the most successful economics textbook in history is

Paul Samuelson's "Economics." There is a saying in economics

departments: "Nobody ever got fired for assigning Samuelson."

They all should have been fired for assigning Samuelson.

The fact that they weren't testifies to the nature of the quid

pro quo underlying the educational oligopoly: what the State is

buying when it creates barriers to entry (accreditation) and

funding.

DON'T FOLLOW THE MONEY

Economists tell us to follow the money. They offer only one

exception: the source of the money.

They tell us to beware of claims of actions "in the public

interest" regarding industry associations that seek government

regulation of their industry. They recommend these investigative

strategies. Ask: "Who wins? Who loses?" "Who pays?"

But then, with nary a nod to inconsistency, they cease

following the money whenever they get to their discussion of

fractional reserve banking.

Anyone who raises the question regarding the beneficiaries

of banking regulation is going to see his textbook's manuscript

come back.

Anyone who follows the money from the 1907 panic to the 1913

Federal Reserve Act is unlikely to receive tenure.

It would seem legitimate to ask the question: "Why don't

economists follow the money when it comes to the creation and

distribution of money?" There is an answer: economic self-

interest.

When, after nine decades, no economist with academic tenure

has asked this question in print, let alone suggesting the

obvious answer, the young economist who truly believes in

economic self-interest should ask himself: "Why is it not in my

economic self-interest to investigate the economic self-interest

of members of the economics profession?"

If he pursues this logically, he will eventually have to ask

this: "What agency is in a position to impose negative sanctions

on those who follow the money?" If this were a segment of "The

Sopranos," the answer would be obvious.

But this is not "The Sopranos." The people we are talking

about have serious power compared to "The Sopranos." There are

lots of books and movies exposing the Mafia. There are no movies

or books on the Mafia and the public interest.

Power is the ability to operate on your own terms without

fear of exposure. It is the ability to persuade shapers of

public opinion not to follow the logic of their convictions.

In the 1932 movie, "Dracula," the vampire was repelled by

three things: a crucifix, a mirror (no reflection), and sunlight.

In other words, he was repelled by the symbol of Christianity,

self-awareness of his status as half-dead, and exposure.

It is much the same with central banking.

CONCLUSION

Those few people who understand the inherent moral fraud in

all fractional reserve banking find that they are not understood

by their peers. They also find that their arguments are not

taken seriously by academic economists.

They find it difficult to explain why the entire profession

has made a monumental methodological error in not applying the

theory of monopoly to central banking. The answer is close at

hand: self-interest.

The doctrine of self-interest is the academic economists'

equivalent of the mirror. They want everyone else to look into

it. They refuse to look into it themselves.

The doctrine of economic self-interest, when pursued

consistently, eventually raises the question of conspiracy.

Conspiracy is the economists' equivalent of the satanist's

crucifix: an inverted Christ. They cry out, "conspiracy

theorist!" whenever they find someone who follows the money back

to the source of the money. This accusation usually works.

Every Ph.D-holding academic turns aside his face and holds up his

cape -- or leather elbow patch -- to shield himself. Rothbard

refused. "Conspiracy theorist? You've got it!" he chortled.

The economics cartel could never deal with him successfully.

As for sunlight, that would be a comprehensive series of

studies on the history and economics of collegiate accreditation.

It would also be an analysis equating tax-funded schools with

tax-funded churches. With this, the economists would have to go

back into their coffins.

If you ever read an economics textbook, think of the author

as Bela Lugosi. This will help you to understand the chapters on

money and banking, as well as the non-chapters on education.

************

Интересный анализ экономиста который задается вопросами, непринятыми в научном сообществе

[RostovtsiAlik]

Статья в тему.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/da491b56-34fd-11dc...00779fd2ac.html

Автор - экономист Financial Times - представляет свой анализ двух новых книг, ратующих за протекционизм в экономическом развитии развивающихся стран - взгляд, скажем, "не очень популярный" в мэинстриме.

Кстати, в последнее время в англоязычной прессе участились обсуждения тем и исследований экономистов, идущих вразрез с мэинстримом [мэинстримом в данном контексте принято считать нео-классическую экономическую теорию МВФ, Банка и т.д. Стандартные характеристики: свободный рынок, открытость финансовых рынков, борьба с монополиями, миним. гос. участия в экономике и обязательное математическое моделлирование, где все равны, и т.д.]. То ли мэинстрим признает правоту другой точки зрения, то ли ищет новые идеи для своего развития...

Думайте, что хотите, но последнее предложение статьи самое звучное и по смыслу и по своей теоретической [идеологической?] направленности.

R.A. :shljapa:

[Josef Gabcik]

Кстати кто-нить в курсе кого выбрали главой МВФ? В конце лета (Август) читал статью Гайдара в Ведомостях (Financial Times & The Wall Street Journal) о выдвижении кандидатов. С одной стороны писалось , что предлагали француза (от западной Европы и США) , с другой некого чеха с невероятным опытом раборы в банковской сфере (от остального мира, инициаторы страны южной Америки и Азии). К первому сентября прения по кандидатам должны были закончиться, и вроде как начаться обсуждения непосредственно по выбору. Сам же Гайдар выступал аж по Ехо Москвы, забавное интервью получилось. Если есть желающие тыкайте сюда: http://www.echo.msk.ru/guests/1781/

[Josef Gabcik]

Автор - экономист Financial Times - представляет свой ратующих за протекционизм в экономическом развитии развивающихся стран

[RostovtsiAlik]

Кстати кто-нить в курсе кого выбрали главой МВФ? В конце лета (Август) читал статью Гайдара в Ведомостях (Financial Times & The Wall Street Journal) о выдвижении кандидатов. С одной стороны писалось , что предлагали француза (от западной Европы и США) , с другой некого чеха с невероятным опытом раборы в банковской сфере (от остального мира, инициаторы страны южной Америки и Азии). К первому сентября прения по кандидатам должны были закончиться, и вроде как начаться обсуждения непосредственно по выбору. Сам же Гайдар выступал аж по Ехо Москвы, забавное интервью получилось. Если есть желающие тыкайте сюда: http://www.echo.msk.ru/guests/1781/