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June 19, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
Resources:
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
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The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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The
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June 20,
2002
What Are They Doing to Argentina?
by Mark Weisbrot
The head of the IMF's delegation to Argentina
was recently cornered outside his hotel room by reporters from
a popular, muck-raking television show. They handed him a set
of large, plastic Halloween vampire teeth. "We found these
lodged in President Duhalde's neck," they told him, "and
wanted to return them to you."
Such views of the IMF are commonly held
in Argentina, and contrast sharply with those expressed in Washington
media and policy circles. Here, the debate has been about whether
the IMF should "help" Argentina, which is suffering
from four  years
of economic depression, a collapse of its currency and banking
system, and default on its public debt. The doves say yes, the
country is desperate; the hawks say no, not until the government
demonstrates more willingness to "reform."
Both sides are misreading the actual
situation. The IMF is not offering any help to the Argentine
economy. Even if an agreement is reached, there will be no new
money -- only enough to pay the Fund and other official creditors
such as the World Bank.
Furthermore, Argentina is not facing
a simple choice of whether to accept or refuse this "help."
It is much worse than that. The IMF is using its power as head
of an international creditors' cartel to prolong Argentina's
agony. Credit from the World Bank, from European governments,
and even the day-to-day credit that businesses need to conduct
international trade are being held up until the IMF gives the
ok.
This distinction is crucial. Imagine
that someone is drowning, and a passerby does nothing to save
him. This would be morally reprehensible. But what if the drowning
man is trying to claw his way onto the shore, and the passerby
kicks him and pushes him back into the river?
The latter case is much worse, not only
from a moral but a practical point of view: the drowning man
might save himself if not for the outside intervention.
Very simply, the IMF is practicing a
form of extortion, and a fairly brutal one at that. A couple
of months ago the World Bank was supposed to release some $700
million in funds for the unemployed -- now numbering about a
quarter of Argentina's labor force. But they decided to wait
for the IMF's approval.
On a recent visit to Argentina, I met
with Dr. Nestor Oliveri, a physician who runs a health clinic
for the poor in the neighborhood of Matanza, on the outskirts
of Buenos Aires. He pointed to children jumping over an open
drainage ditch. "They touch their mouths, and they get parasites.
We have 30% malnutrition among children in this neighborhood."
And it is getting worse, in a country
that was until recently the richest in Latin America.
What does the IMF want from Argentina?
After more than six months of talks and pressure, it is not even
clear. The government has already agreed to just about everything
that the Fund demanded, including drastic spending cuts (especially
for the provincial governments) and rewriting their bankruptcy
laws to make these more favorable to creditors. Yet the IMF keeps
moving the goal posts, and coming up with new demands. Some financial
analysts have concluded that the IMF is deliberately punishing
Argentina for defaulting on its international debt, so as to
discourage others from taking this path.
The Fund's policy conditions will probably
worsen the depression, by causing layoffs of hundreds of thousands
of workers and reducing aggregate demand in the economy. For
four years, the IMF has been arguing that the only way to get
the economy growing is to first restore the confidence of investors,
especially foreign investors.
But the measures that they have recommended
to do this, such as cutting government spending, have further
weakened the economy. These policies have therefore had the opposite
effect. And now, by choking off credit from most other sources
-- i.e., its extortion -- the Fund is accelerating the decline.
Unlike most countries that turn to the
Fund, Argentina is currently running a trade surplus. This means
that it does not really need external financing. Nor does it
need dollars to fix its banking system, which now runs on pesos.
In other words, the country is capable
of recovering on its own. At this point the biggest obstacle
to re-starting growth may be the Fund itself. As the crisis drags
on, Argentina may have to find a way to get around the IMF.
Mark Weisbrot
is co-Director of the Center
for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
He is co-author (with Dean Baker) of Social
Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press).
Today's
Features
Jeffrey St. Clair and
Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
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