ECONOMIC TERRORISM
by Michel Chossudovsky [8 May 2001]
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
* In Yugoslavia, the IMF has become the steadfast financial bureaucracy of the Western military alliance, working hand in glove with NATO and the US State Department. *

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is known to bully developing countries, imposing strong doses of "deadly economic medicine" while saddling governments with spiraling external debts. In complicity with Washington, the IMF often meddles in cabinet appointments in debtor countries. In Korea in the turmoil of the 1997 Asian crisis, the Finance Minister --sacked for allegedly "hindering negotiations" with the IMF-- was replaced by a former IMF official.1 In Turkey, also in the wake of an IMF-style financial meltdown (March 2001), the Minister of Economy was substituted by a Vice-President of the World Bank. 2
But what has occurred in Yugoslavia sets a new record in the abusive practices of the Washington-based international financial bureaucracy: the arrest of a head of State of a debtor nation --demanded by its main creditors-- has become "a pre-condition" for the holding of loan negotiations.
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