No, you are not mistaken. I know that I want (and Joe Stiglitz wants) a kinder, gentler IMF, willing to loan more money for longer periods of time at lower interest rates with less conditionality; and willing to broker debt-forgiveness deals.
That's not what we got. We got an IMF that is going to loan at higher interest rates in the future. I don't think *that* much damage was actually done--the IMF does have more resources, after all, and is able to loan more for longer terms--but some damage was done.
>this weak congressional rump of liberals therefore pander to
>the AFL-CIO (big donors, they) which for whatever incomprehensible
>reason also supported IMF recap (maybe they already got their minimum
>wage or fast-track defeat or whatever and didn't want to piss off the
>president some more, as it has been described to me by people close
>to Nader).
An IMF that is out of money is not a kinder, gentler IMF--willing to loan more money for longer periods of time at lower interest rates with less conditionality; and willing to broker debt-forgiveness deals. If you wanted a nastier, rougher IMF, you voted against recapitalization. Credit to the AFL-CIO for recognizing this.
>After all, a more conservative Brazilian regime
>actually defaulted on its foreign debt from Feb-Sept'87, and more or
>less got away with it (trade finance still flowed, preventing any
>import-export problems); as did apartheid South Africa during the
>debt repayment "standstill" of late 1985. We need a few more cases of
>contemporary high-profile resistance -- Mahathir the most obvious
>notwithstanding despicable politics, China and India refusing
>financial liberalisation, Thailand putting on some exchange controls,
>Russia's currency controls, all add up, but not yet to a critical
>mass -- and then, yes, just as Russia catalysed via a $40
>bn default, hopefully that would be the basis for one, two, many
>LTCMs, and hopefully in turn attempts to bail out the US rentiers
>would kick off even a moment of populist resistance in the US. That's
>the only hope, if we don't want to see Summers/Fischer designing the
>next several dozen Indonesias over the coming years....
>My sense is that since the NY bankers don't have another globocop
>aside from the IMF, they'd come to any kind of international
>bankruptcy bargaining table with the humility of, say, the 1930s
>bondholders.
Aha. Now the real agenda becomes clear: to have another Great Depression. The last Great Depression wasn't a very good thing for "progressive" forces worldwide.
It's one thing for events in world history to happen, as it were, twicee. It's quite another thing to actively try to make them happen twice--both times as tragedy.
Brad DeLong