Interesting article bout the IMF, including who runs it

[dixiegrrrrl]

Since being set up in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference along with the World Bank, the IMF has played a critical and at times controversial role in stabilising the global economy.

It has intervened in national economies with huge loans and often a highly prescriptive set of loan conditions as it did in the 1997 and 1998 East Asian crisis, in Africa throughout the last three decades and most recently in the eurozone in Ireland in 2010, in Portugal in 2011 - and of course, now in Greece.

IMF loan agreements usually require severe cut-backs in government spending - austerity with a capital 'A' - tax reform, pensions reforms and a crackdown on corruption. The Fund rarely leaves a country with more friends than it had when it arrived.

'An incredible anachronism'

Under the rules agreed when the IMF was established, every IMF managing director must be a European. Currently it is Christine Lagarde - and in fact five of the 11 IMF's leaders have been French. Meanwhile, the head of the World Bank must be an American, say those same rules.

So when unpopular measures are demanded by the IMF in exchange for funding for a country, there is a sense that the West, the world's richer economies, the ones that have been calling the shots for the last 70 years and are seemingly willing to ignore the rapidly shifting global economic landscape - are still calling the shots.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-33652399

[mother earth]

1. So, now they are worried there might be an alternative to them? "It will be interesting to see

where their ball lands." It sure will...

[Demeter]

2. Abuse of power leads to loss of power

and the IMF and the World Bank are global losers for People.