I fear that you are off on your facts in several regards here.
1) The IMF, even on the best of days, does not development aid, but rather only "emergency loans" for macro stabilization and foreign debt management problems/crises. Although the former Yugoslavia had a pretty high foreign indebtedness, reducing the scattered remnants of this is a minor issue now. It certainly is not a big factor in the poverty of Kosmet. It is the World Bank that hands out aid for specific development projects.
2) Extending on this, the Marshall Plan was not run through either of the above Bretton Woods agencies, but directly from the US government with some input from the' ancestor of the OECD.
3) During the petrodollar crises associated with the 1970s oil price shock crises, the IMF did not "print vast supplies of SDRs." I believe that the UK did take out a loan from the IMF during that period, but it was the only major western capitalist power to do so. Otherwise the recycling of petrodollars was handled largely through the private banking sector with SAMA piling up 90-day T bills.
Hey, there was a recession, after all, which was part of the adjustment process to the shock.
4) BTW, do you now support troops on the ground in Kosmet? That is the bottom line of your "anti-fascist" rhetoric. We are indeed now at the point of do that or stop the bombing. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 7:14 PM Subject: Re: Marshall Plan for Balkans?
>At 12:21 14/04/99 -0400, you wrote:
>>Chris Burford wrote:
>>
>>>I actually think that Special Drawing Rights should be printed for the
>>>Africa, but that suggestion was also met by a received left wing common
>>>sense and worldy wisdom as quite impractical.
>>
>>Chris, for one you show a touching faith in the healing powers of funny
>>money, e.g. SDRs. Africa desperately needs real human, financial, and
>>physical resources, not a fresh issue of a notional currency. And for two,
>>it's not "received left wing common sense" that deems any IMF indulgence
>>towards Africa as "impractical." It's study of the IMF's 50-year history -
>>and that of its masters at the U.S. Treasury* - that makes it seem about
as
>>likely as l'Osservatore Romano running a front-page editorial admitting
the
>>Virgin Birth is a hoax.
>>
>>Doug
>>
>>----
>>*"The IMF is a toy of the United States to pursue its economic policy
>>offshore." - MIT economist Rudi Dornbusch
>
>
>All money is funny. It has fetishistic power. Whatever its units, its
>exchange value is a proportion of the total social labour of the economy,
>in this case the global economy.
>
>When the West printed itself vast supplies of Special Drawing Rights in the
>70's after the Arab oil price hikes, it was not printing "notional
>currency". Nor was it motivated by touching faith. It wanted, and got,
>access to massive amounts of real exchange value which would otherwise have
>been lost to the Arabs. It forced a devaluation of the entire global
>currency system to cushion itself against having to take the shock of the
>oil price hikes and go into recession.
>
>The point I was making about the Balkans was similar. Apart from a typo
>(IMG for IMF) I wrote:
>
>
>>Power in the [IMF] is proportional to capital contributions. It has a
>>constitution that favours the largest capitalist countries and perpetuates
>>their control of the global economy. Should they think it in their
>>interests they will issue Special Drawing Rights. Full stop/period!
>
>
>This war is about definitions of human rights which differ substantially in
>advanced capitalist countries from those in other countries. It is about
>very different definitions of national rights. For the Serbs, Kosovo is
>part of their nation because of a mass of medieval Christina archeological
>sites prior to 1389.
>
>It is about the fragmentation of Comecon and the expansion of the European
>superstate into Eastern Europe, imposing its own conditions.
>
>Not just for humanitarian reasons, because of the infrastructural desert
>that will be left in Serbia and Kosovo after the war, but far more
>importantly, for the stabilisation of the whole of eastern Europe short of
>the border with the Ukraine and Belarus, it is in the interests of the
>leaders of the IMF to inject capital resources into this region.
>
>As the Chinese emphasise, it is risky to intervene in the internal affairs
>of sovereign states even against manifest national oppression. But the
>treatment of the refugees at the Macedonian border shows that once armed
>force is used to clear patches of communities out of one bit of the Balkans
>or another, the fear and paranoia can spread undermining all the borders of
>sovereign states in the region. The loss of life and economic destruction
>will be comparable to the partition of India.
>
>That is the explanation of the curious hesitation of NATO to arm the KLA
>openly, and to state openly the call for an independent Kosovo.
>
>No, there simply has to be an investment and stabilisation plan for the
>Balkans. As all money is funny money, and SDR's have served the purpose in
>the past, they can serve it again.
>
>
>The only reason why this will not happen is if the US does not want Europe
>to get too strong. But so long as Europe is dependent on US air power, that
>might be thought to be appropriately packaged balance of power.
>
>It will be called the Fischer Plan, and it will have nice green edges.
>
>Chris Burford
>
>London
>
>