[stop-imf] Guardian: New roles for the IMF and World Bank debate (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4243160,00.html
New roles for the IMF and World Bank debate

Special report: globalisation

Wednesday August 22, 2001


The big players of globalisation, the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, have never been so much on the defensive before. Not only
have they had to cut their week-long annual meeting in Washington next month
to a hasty two days in an effort to lessen the street protests. They also
face a growing cyber-jungle of critical websites run by a global network of
non-governmental organisations and fair-trade activists.

The street violence gets most of the media attention, as it did during the
G8 summit in Genoa last month. But the "threat" posed by the lobby groups is
more damaging. It is backed up by detailed analysis, local knowledge and
direct testimony from the recipients, some would say victims, of the
particular brand of unregulated neoliberal globalisation which the IMF and
World Bank have been pushing.

The two bodies have long accepted they must meet critics. NGOs like Oxfam
and Christian Aid are invited to argue with IMF and Bank officials at
seminars and press conferences. Now the two organisations have been
challenged by a group of American fair-trade lobbies to a series of
town-hall debates, moderated by independent journalists. The IMF and World
Bank had little option but to accept, although they are agonising over the
format, apparently for fear of pie-throwers and egg-lobbers.There is no
value in having debates turn into stunts, but if security can be guaranteed,
the IMF and World Bank ought to put their arguments to debate not only in
the United States but in every continent. Public exchanges of this kind need
to be regular and sustained. The IMF and World Bank can no longer behave
like private corporations hiding behind a culture of minimal disclosure.
They are publicly financed bodies which need to admit they have no monopoly
on expertise, have often made mistakes and opted for wrong policies, and can
learn from the voters.