Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Former-IMF official admits it is evil
A man with a unfortunate name spills the beans on the culture and practises inside the IMF. The description fits with the idea that the place is filled with free market fundamentalists, people with a near-religous belief in the functioning of the market (I first saw this term when reading Eric Hobsbawn's awe-inspiring Age of Extremes ).
Jax
That a critic of the International Monetary Fund would accuse the institution of arrogance and of imposing economic policies that foment corruption is not unusual. More surprising is when those accusations are leveled at the world's largest lender by one of its former senior officials.
The former official concerned is Claudio Loser, who recounts the internal workings of the institution in full detail to Argentine journalist Ernesto Tenembaum. The result is Enemigos, a book that has hit the best seller list in Buenos Aires over the last three months and is on the verge of selling more than 50,000 copies. What began as a simple interview by Tenembaum for a newspaper article turned into 14 months of e-mail correspondence during 2002 and 2003 in which Loser recounts, explains and criticizes IMF policies and their role in Argentina's economic collapse.
Loser was appointed head of the institution's Western Hemisphere Department in 1994, from where he witnessed - and intervened in - the rise and fall of the economy of his homeland, including the collapse of the financial system, the run on the banks, the social protests, the devaluation of the peso and ultimately the 2001 debt default. In 2002, Loser was removed from his post.
Enemigos contains some surprising moments, such as when Loser tells of how IMF former president Horst Köhler had an almost religious vision of Argentina's economy. "He believed that Argentina should repent and pay for its sins," the former official says. (Link)
Jax
That a critic of the International Monetary Fund would accuse the institution of arrogance and of imposing economic policies that foment corruption is not unusual. More surprising is when those accusations are leveled at the world's largest lender by one of its former senior officials.
The former official concerned is Claudio Loser, who recounts the internal workings of the institution in full detail to Argentine journalist Ernesto Tenembaum. The result is Enemigos, a book that has hit the best seller list in Buenos Aires over the last three months and is on the verge of selling more than 50,000 copies. What began as a simple interview by Tenembaum for a newspaper article turned into 14 months of e-mail correspondence during 2002 and 2003 in which Loser recounts, explains and criticizes IMF policies and their role in Argentina's economic collapse.
Loser was appointed head of the institution's Western Hemisphere Department in 1994, from where he witnessed - and intervened in - the rise and fall of the economy of his homeland, including the collapse of the financial system, the run on the banks, the social protests, the devaluation of the peso and ultimately the 2001 debt default. In 2002, Loser was removed from his post.
Enemigos contains some surprising moments, such as when Loser tells of how IMF former president Horst Köhler had an almost religious vision of Argentina's economy. "He believed that Argentina should repent and pay for its sins," the former official says. (Link)
