VIDEO: More IMF “Economic Medicine” Is Not the Solution
G-20 Proposals will exacerbate the Global Economic Crisis
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Copyright: Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, 2009.
“Contrary to the spirit of the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, which was predicated on “economic reconstruction” and stability of major exchange rates, the structural adjustment program (SAP) has, since the early 1980s, largely contributed to destabilizing national currencies and ruining the economies of developing countries.
The restructuring of the world economy under the guidance of the Washington-based international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO) increasingly denies individual developing countries the possibility of building a national economy. The internationalization of macroeconomic policy transforms countries into open economic territories and national economies into “reserves” of cheap labor and natural resources. The state apparatus is undermined, industry for the internal market is destroyed, national enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy These reforms have also been conducive to the elimination of minimum wage legislation, the repeal of social programs and a general diminution of the state’s role in fighting poverty.
The intellectual myopia of mainstream economics prevents an understanding of the actual workings of global capitalism and its destructive impact on the livelihood of millions of people. International institutions including the United Nations follow suit, upholding the dominant economic discourse with little assessment of how economic restructuring backlashes on national societies, leading to the collapse of institutions and the escalation of social conflict.”
Michel Chossudovsky
Journal of International Affairs (Columbia University), Vol. 52, no. 1 (Fall 1998)
The impacts IMF “economic medicine” are extensively reviewed in Chossudovsky’s international best-seller
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
by Michel Chossudovsky
In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.
This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.
In this new enlarged edition –which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction– the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Published in 13 languages. More than 150,000 copies sold Worldwide.
