Adding Fuel to Fire: How IMF demands for austerity will drive up inequality worldwide

Low Income ◽

Uneven Distribution ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Health Crisis ◽

Global Institutions ◽

Briefing Paper ◽

The Imf

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a huge blow to every country, and many governments have struggled to meet their populations’ urgent needs during the crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stepped in to offer extra support to a large number of countries during the pandemic. However, Oxfam’s analysis shows that as of 15 March 2021, 85% of the 107 COVID-19 loans negotiated between the IMF and 85 governments indicate plans to undertake austerity once the health crisis abates. The findings in this briefing paper show that the IMF is systematically encouraging countries to adopt austerity measures once the pandemic subsides, risking a severe spike in already increased inequality levels. A variety of studies have revealed the uneven distribution of the burden of austerity, which is more likely to be shouldered by women, low-income households and vulnerable groups, while the wealth of the richest people increases. Oxfam joins global institutions and civil society in urging governments worldwide and the IMF to focus their energies instead on a people-centred, just and equal recovery that will fight inequality and not fuel it. Austerity will not ‘build back better’.

The imf and Protection of Vulnerable Groups

Nordic Journal of International Law ◽

10.1163/15718107-08902001 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 89 (2) ◽

pp. 209-243

Author(s):

Viljam Engström

Keyword(s):

International Economic ◽

Human Rights ◽

Present Article ◽

Policy Making ◽

Vulnerable Groups ◽

Human Rights Law ◽

Know How ◽

The Imf

The concept of vulnerability serves to focus protection on those most in need. While prominent in human rights law, protection of vulnerable groups is also increasingly invoked by international economic/financial actors such as the International Monetary Fund (imf). The present article explores how vulnerability enters imf policymaking. The article looks for points of contact of imf practice, with a human rights-based conception of vulnerability. The aim of the article is not to revisit the discussion on human rights accountability of the imf. Instead, the article seeks to identify and analyse the function of vulnerability in the policy-making of the Fund. The protection of vulnerable groups, the article claims, is gradually constituted as part of the law of the imf. For this reason alone, it is of importance to know how vulnerability enters imf policy-making and whom the imf considers vulnerable. Moreover, the imf also becomes a source for the identification of vulnerable groups.

Practising what they Preach: Did the IMF and Iceland Exercise Good Governance in their Relations 2008-2011?

Nordicum-Mediterraneum ◽

10.33112/nm.8.1.1 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Hjálti Ómar Ágústsson ◽

Rachael Lorna Johnstone

Keyword(s):

International Institutions ◽

Good Governance ◽

The Past ◽

The Imf

Between September 2008 and August 2011, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Iceland were engaged in cooperation under a stand-by agreement involving a loan from the IMF to Iceland of over 2bn USD. The IMF is one of a number of major international institutions that has been increasing its emphasis on good governance over the past two decades, in particular, emphasising the need for improved governance in debtor countries. In this paper, the authors review the extent to which principles of good governance were exercised in the interaction between the IMF and Iceland within the context of the stand-by programme.

Selected Decisions and Selected Documents of the International Monetary Fund, Forty First Issue Supplement

10.5089/9781513557526.014 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

International Organizations ◽

Executive Board ◽

Second Amendment ◽

Board Of Governors ◽

Frequent Reference ◽

Made In ◽

The Imf

This volume is the Forty-First Issue of Selected Decisions and Selected Documents of the IMF. It includes decisions, interpretations, and resolutions of the Executive Board and the Board of Governors of the IMF, as well as selected documents, to which frequent reference is made in the current activities of the IMF. In addition, it includes certain documents relating to the IMF, the United Nations, and other international organizations. As with other recent issues, the number of decisions in force continues to increase, with the decision format tending to be longer given the use of summings up in lieu of formal decisions. Accordingly, it has become necessary to delete certain decisions that were included in earlier issues, that is, those that only completed or called for reviews of decisions, those that lapsed, and those that were superseded by more recent decisions. Wherever reference is made in these decisions and documents to a provision of the IMF’s Articles of Agreement or Rules and Regulations that has subsequently been renumbered by, or because of, the Second Amendment of the Fund’s Articles of Agreement (effective April 1, 1978), the corresponding provision currently in effect is cited in a footnote.

From IMF Poster Child to Wayward Student

Why Not Default? ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691180106.003.0014 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 185-193

Author(s):

Jerome Roos

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Financial System ◽

The United States ◽

Fiscal Discipline ◽

Enforcement Mechanism ◽

International Financial System ◽

The Imf

This chapter considers why the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did it not prevent Argentina's record default of 2001. It suggests that the IMF was both unable and unwilling to stop it. While the second enforcement mechanism of conditional IMF lending was initially fully operative, helping to enforce Argentina's compliance in the first years of the crisis, the outcome of the megaswap greatly reduced the risk of an Argentine default to the international financial system. Combined with mounting domestic opposition in the United States to further international bailout loans, this greatly weakened the IMF's capacity to impose fiscal discipline on Argentina, eventually leading the Fund to pull the plug on its own bailout program, causing the second enforcement mechanism to break down altogether. The chapter recounts the process through which this breakdown occurred.

Argentina and the IMF in Turbulent Times, 1976–1984

The Currency of Confidence ◽

10.7591/cornell/9781501705120.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Stephen C. Nelson

Keyword(s):

Sovereign Default ◽

Military Junta ◽

Turbulent Times ◽

Economic Beliefs ◽

The Military ◽

Economic Policymaking ◽

The Imf

This chapter examines Argentina's relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the period 1976–1984. It tracks Argentina's engagement with the IMF from the arrival of a Fund mission soon after the military junta took power in 1976 through to the economic meltdown in the last months of 2001, which culminated in the withdrawal of IMF support for the country and the largest sovereign default in history to that point. The Argentina-IMF case is used to test the argument linking treatment of borrowers to shared economic beliefs. The chapter first provides an overview of economic policymaking in Argentina in 1976–1981 and in 1991–2001; economic policymaking in the latter period was dominated by neoliberals. It also compares the economic beliefs of neoliberals with those of structuralists and concludes with a discussion of the breakdown in Argentine-IMF relations.

Part II Commercial Aspects of the Marine Environment, 6 The Work of the International Monetary Fund and Its Possible Relevance to Global Ocean Governance

10.1093/law/9780198823964.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Doussis Emmanuella

Keyword(s):

Technical Assistance ◽

Institutional Development ◽

Global Ocean ◽

International Agencies ◽

Ocean Governance ◽

History Of ◽

Decision Making Processes ◽

The Imf

This chapter discusses the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in global ocean governance. It first traces the history of the IMF, from its inception at Bretton Woods in 1944 to the late 1970s and beyond, and highlights the factors that have influenced its institutional development as well as its current institutional profile. It then describes the IMF’s membership, structure, main functions, and decision-making processes before analysing the possible input of the Fund to matters related to ocean governance. In particular, it considers the ways in which the IMF is involved in global ocean governance through its three main functions: economic surveillance, lending, and capacity building. Although the Fund has no direct relevance to global ocean governance, the chapter shows that the IMF may contribute to its improvement by providing technical assistance and policy advice, as well as a better interaction with other, more competent, international agencies.

Book review: Unholy trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO Richard Peet

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences ◽

10.4102/sajems.v9i4.1054 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 567-569

Author(s):

M Breitenbach

Keyword(s):

World Bank ◽

World Trade ◽

Global Economy ◽

World Trade Organisation ◽

Political Interest ◽

The Imf

In this timely book Richard Peet and his team lay the foundation with an excellent analysis of the process of globalisation and the resultant emergence of the global economy. The authors are especially critical of the increasing influence of institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the economy and the consequences experienced by peoples, cultures and the environment. The single ideology of neo-liberalism is blamed for the undesirable outcomes. This book considers concepts of power, political interest, hegemony, discourse, responsibility and the power of practicality, in critically examining the IMF, World Bank and WTO. The conclusion is reached that “all three institutions play roles greatly different from those originally agreed to under the charters that set them up”.

The International Monetary Fund

International Organization ◽

10.1017/s0020818300013497 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 131-151 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Edward M. Bernstein

Keyword(s):

Developed Countries ◽

Less Developed Countries ◽

Monetary Reform ◽

High Regard ◽

Very High ◽

The Imf

One would not ordinarily think of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as of particular importance to the less developed countries. Nevertheless, in recent years the less developed coun-tries have come to have a very high regard for the IMF; and the IMF, in turn, has become the great defender of the interests of the less developed countries. This entente has evolved out of the course of events. In the current discussions on international monetary reform the IMF has be-come the spokesman for universal participation in reserve creation. This suits the institutional interests of the IMF. At the same time it makes the IMF the advocate of the interests of the less developed countries

Argentina's Bargaining with the IMF

Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs ◽

10.2307/165844 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 55-86 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Kendall W. Stiles

Keyword(s):

Political Connections ◽

Member States ◽

Political Perspective ◽

The World ◽

The Imf ◽

Adjustment Programs

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently published a pamphlet on the question of whether the IMF, as an institution, imposes austerity on debtors. The response focused on the second half of the question and argued that IMF adjustment programs were, in fact, not systematically austere. However, from a political perspective, the first half of the question is much more provocative. Does the IMF “impose” its will on member states, and, if so, how? Many have argued i that, by virtue of its political connections with the financial centers of the world and its intellectual sophistication, the so-called “negotiations” which debtor nations conduct with Fund staff, prior to the drafting of an agreement on lending conditions, is little more than an exercise in coercion on the part of the Fund.

The global financial crisis and its effects on the international monetary funds

Brazilian Journal of Political Economy ◽

10.1590/0101-31572021-3239 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 5-24

Author(s):

Cosimo Magazzino ◽

Marco Mele

Keyword(s):

Financial Crisis ◽

Global Financial Crisis ◽

Economic Policies ◽

A Posteriori ◽

Ex Ante ◽

The Global Financial Crisis ◽

Economic And Financial Crisis ◽

The Imf

ABSTRACT This paper aims to analyze the innovations introduced in the functions of the International Monetary Fund in the context of the 2008 economic and financial crisis. This promoted an action that aimed to strengthen the surveillance function through the adoption of the Integrated Surveillance. Thus, alongside the traditional conditionality based on an a posteriori implementation of adequate economic policies, a criterion of ex ante conditionality in the precautionary branches was also introduced or based on the economic characteristics of the country to be financed. Concerning traditional conditionality, it will be asked whether the IMF has adopted a less extensive approach than its role.