Right now, Brad's friends at the Treasury Department are feverishly lobbying the Congressional conference committee to kill a provision in the House IMF bill forbidding the Fund from imposing user fees on health-care and schools in poor countries. The Nader groups, meanwhile, are struggling to keep the provision.
In Brad's view, making poor people pay for vaccination shots is generous and liberal. Let them eat cake.
> ----------
> From: Doug Henwood[SMTP:dhenwood at panix.com]
> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 3:44 PM
> To: lbo-talk
> Subject: everything's really ok
>
> Those of you who don't subscribe to Brad de Long's list missed this:
>
> >A couple of years ago everyone seemed to agree that the
> >international financial institutions needed major reform--even
> >though half of critics (the Jeffrey Sachs-Joseph Stiglitz wing)
> >believed the institutions were too scrooge-like, and the other half
> >(the Ralph Nader-Wall Street Journal wing) believed the institutions
> >were too generous and liberal. The IMF was forcing countries into
> >deflationary policies that caused severe depressions, or the IMF's
> >generosity had encouraged overlending and overproduction that had
> >caused widespread crisis. But even though the directions of the
> >proposed reforms were directly opposed, everyone seemed to agree
> >that such major reforms were absolutely necessary: all agreed that,
> >in the words of William Greider of the Nation, "the usual financial
> >remedies [would] lead only to failure."
> >
> >Yet here we are. So what went right?
> >
> >What went right was that our global institutions did a much better
> >job of handling the crises of the 1990s than the folk wisdom holds.
>
> How blissful it is to live in this best of all possible worlds.
>
> Doug
>