[stop-imf] Global Days of Resistance to the International Financial Institutions - October 1 through 12

[Robert Weissman]

From: Jubilee South

As the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank celebrate their 60th
anniversary this year, movements from all over the world are mobilizing to
express vigorous opposition to their policies and operations. The occasion
of the Spring Meetings of these twin institutions in Washington, DC last
April was a high point of these initiatives, with protest activities held
in the U.S. capital, as well as in various other countries.

But our efforts to take advantage of the 60th Anniversary of IMF and WB to
protest their role in the domination of the South and the escalating
poverty, marginalization and exclusion of our people have just begun. We
are now calling for coordinated actions on October 1 to 12, 2004 of the
peoples, and to dub these days of October as the Worldwide Days of
Resistance to the IMF & World Bank. Let us urge all groups, people's
organizations, social movements and networks to organize activities and
mobilize during these days.

Our global protests will coincide with the Annual Meetings of the IMF and
the WB on October 1 to 4 and continue through October 12, a day of
mobilizations in the Americas around injustices perpetuated on indigenous
peoples since the landing of Columbus in the Caribbean Islands over 500
years ago.

We urge you to sign and circulate the attached manifesto and ask other
groups to do so.

Let us work together to make these Days of Resistance a resounding cry for
the end of the hegemony of these institutions. Let us mobilize on these
days for a massive expression of unity of the peoples of the North and the
South in the struggle to build a new economic order founded on the
economic, political and social empowerment of all people to live fully
human lives.

This campaign action is being coordinated by Jubilee South and the IFI
OUT!, a global network/movement of resistance against international
financial institutions, including the IMF, the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the
African Development Bank.


On the 60th YEAR of the BRETTON WOODS INSTITUTIONS let us all shout:
IMF and WORLD BANK OUT!


We will be writing to you again in the coming days for updates and
exchanges on your plans of action and activities.

Yes to Life, No to IMF-World Bank!


Lidy B. Nacpil
International Coordinator
Jubilee South


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draft
END 60 YEARS OF DESTRUCTION:
IMF-WORLD BANK OUT NOW!

Sixty years ago, delegates from governments of 45 countries met in
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, and laid out a blueprint for
redesigning the world economy. For the first time, globally binding
agreements and institutions were forged, supposedly in the spirit of
international economic cooperation. In truth, the meeting, dominated by
the victors of World War II led by the United States, paved the way for
a handful of powerful and wealthy Northern countries and governments to
dictate to all of humanity the shape of the world economy as they saw fit.

Founding the Institutions, Ruling the World Economy

The Bretton Woods Agreement created the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or
simply, the World Bank (WB), giving a mandate to these twin institutions
to maintain a global order and economic climate conducive to capitalist
development.

The IMF would enforce the agreed rules of a global financial and
monetary system with the U.S. dollar as the international currency,
striking a balance between a rigidly fixed currency exchange system and
an unfettered floating rate system. The World Bank, on the other hand,
would extend loans to war-torn economies and poor countries for use in
=93development projects=94 and the =93alleviation of mass poverty=94.

The structures and decision-making processes that were established
reflect the grossly imbalanced power relations between nations. Just
like private corporations, voting power and rights of members are
proportional to their =93shares=94. Not surprisingly, the biggest owner of
the IMF and the World Bank is the United States.

Several changes have taken place since the founding of the IMF and World
Bank in 1944. Rules governing the world economy were adapted to emerging
problems and new requirements of the global capitalist system. Steps
were taken to enhance and reinforce the powers of these institutions
over countries of the South, including the formation of new entities
under the IMF and World Bank and the establishment of their regional
counterparts - the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and
Inter-American Development Bank.

For the greater part of the 20th century, the needs and requirements of
the global capitalist order to thrive and prevail have been defined by
these institutions. In turn, the paradigm and policies of these
institutions have been determined by its most powerful members, the
wealthiest countries of the world led by the United States.

Debt and Destruction

As oil prices rose in the early 1970s, many of the developed countries
cut back on demand for goods from South countries to pay for oil and
reduce balance-of-payments deficits. Non-oil-producing South countries
reeled from the impacts of skyrocketing oil prices, coupled with the
fall in the demand for and trading prices of their key commodities.

International banks and financial institutions, on the other hand, found
themselves flush with enormous dollar surpluses from the quadrupling of
the prices of crude oil. Driven by the need to invest the surplus
capital, they took advantage of the economic vulnerabilities of South
countries and aggressively peddled loans. Relentless and indiscriminate,
creditors showed no regard for internal democratic processes and
national laws. Loans were lent irresponsibly to corrupt governments and
to dubious projects that were non-viable, damaging to communities and
the environment, or tainted with fraud and onerous terms. Creditors also
liberally extended loans to private corporations requiring government
guarantees, conveniently ensuring repayment with taxpayers=92 money.

More insidious, politically motivated reasons also pushed the high wave
of lending in the =9170s and =9180s, as Northern governments used the IMF
and the World Bank to promote their politico-military and economic
interests in the South. In the face of strengthening liberation
movements in the South, IMF and World Bank loans propped up repressive
dictatorships and authoritarian regimes loyal to the United States, such
as Marcos=92 of the Philippines, Mobutu=92s of Zaire, Suharto=92s of
Indonesia, and the successive dictatorships in Argentina. The ill-gotten
wealth that these despots and their cronies pocketed through onerous
debt transactions are still being paid for by peoples of the South today.

The external debt of South countries grew enormously through the =9170s,
eventually leading to a debt crisis in the early 1980s. A deep global
recession ushered in the =9180s with the demand for export commodities of
South nations declining and interest rates soaring as a result of the
floating exchange-rate policy. Only with Mexico=92s threat of default in
1982 was the gravity of the debt crisis publicly acknowledged by the
international community. By then, many South countries were teetering on
the brink of financial collapse or going through severe economic
contraction.

In the succeeding years, debt payments of South countries took huge and
continually expanding shares of government spending, resulting in the
deterioration of basic services and public utilities. A vicious cycle
set in as governments borrowed in increasing amounts in order to service
their debts.

The IMF, WB and creditor governments led by the G7 countries implemented
various =93debt relief=94 schemes. These programs were partly in response t=
o
pressure from debt campaigns and public opinion and so were cleverly
designed to appear to be in aid of debt-strapped South countries. More
importantly, however, these schemes were aimed at keeping the countries
in the treadmill of paying their debts, continuing their borrowings, and
sticking the economic conditionalities. Thus, rather than provide real
relief, the schemes redounded to far greater benefit for the creditors.

For instance, the Brady Plan of the early 1990s which targeted countries
hit by the debt crisis of the =9180s such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil,
and the Philippines, transformed a large part of commercial debts into
bonds, instruments which involve stronger payment guarantees and whose
terms cannot be renegotiated. Instead of paving the way for debt
reduction, it allowed creditors to cut their losses, turn the debts into
paper that could be traded in the secondary markets to generate profits,
and improve the debt indicators of target countries so they could lend
to these countries again. In short, the Brady Plan led to more borrowing
and larger debts. Less than a decade later, Argentina fell into another
debt crisis, and other countries are showing signs of following in its wake=
.

The IMF and WB unveiled the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC)
debt-relief program in the mid- 1990s. Despite its re-launching as the
Enhanced HIPC in the late =9190s, this scheme has been little more than a
mechanism for creditors to clean their books and collect payments from
countries that were about to default or were already defaulting. HIPC
also exacted compliance with structural adjustment programs as requisite
for eligibility, and eventually recycling SAPs in the year 2000 into
Bank- and Fund-mandated =93poverty reduction strategy papers=94, or PRSPs.

Despite these debt-relief schemes, the external debt of the countries of
the South came to US$2.4 trillion by the year 2002, up from US$580
billion in 1980. The debt payments by South countries totaled to about
US$4.8 trillion for the 22-year period.

Conditionalities, Structural Adjustment Programs, and PRSPS

With the debt of South countries ballooning to mind-boggling
proportions, the IMF-World Bank held even greater sway over South
government. Using debt as leverage, the Fund and the Bank and their
regional counterparts compel South countries to implement economic
policies as conditionalities attached to loans and as requirements for
positive credit ratings, ratings that the international financial
community uses to determine a country=92s access to, and the terms of,
lending.

These economic conditionalities not only include policies deemed
necessary to ensure loan repayments, more importantly, they require
strategic restructuring of South economies to give free movement to
capital and goods. South countries are thus laid bare to even greater
plunder by transnational corporations, international banks and other
financial institutions, and Northern governments. At the same time, the
economies of the South become more oriented to and integrated with the
global economy, relying more and more on the demands of the world
market, becoming even more dependent on international investments and
credit. This process, called globalization, is the direct consequence of
the policies of the IMF, the World Bank and their regional partners.

Since the late 1970s, the IMF has been requiring borrowing countries to
implement Fund programs that emphasize restrictive fiscal and monetary
policies, including those that cover taxes, budget and public spending,
interest rates, foreign-exchange rates, international reserves and money
supply. In particular, countries undergoing balance-of-payments crises
are compelled to implement austere measures known as =93stabilization=94
policies.

The World Bank, on the other hand, has been exacting compliance with
broader, longer-term structural adjustment programs that include trade
and finance liberalization, deregulation of industries, and
privatization of services and utilities. The Bank not only imposes these
policies on South countries as loan conditionalities; it finances the
implementation of these policies and provides the expertise and
technical assistance required.

The impacts of these adjustment policies are well-documented. Numerous
testimonies, evaluations and studies bear witness to their disastrous
effects:

*Debilitating IMF policies have led to dramatic reductions in public
spending on social services and consequently to the severe deterioration
of public health, education, housing programs; massive lay-offs of
public sector employees; more regressive tax systems; increases in
interest rates; and higher prices of basic commodities.

*The structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the regional
development banks have led to destruction of local enterprises and
farms; loss of livelihoods and jobs; decline in incomes, increasing
prices of goods; narrower access to health care, education and decent
housing; dislocation of entire communities, especially those of
indigenous peoples; widespread damage to the environment; and erosion of
sovereign control over natural resources and development policies. Women
and girls in particular, additionally disadvantaged by gender
discrimination, experience even greater marginalization and impoverishment.

In recent years, these international financial institutions have been
relentless in their push for the privatization of water and power
services. With the red carpet practically rolled out by the Fund, the
World Bank and the regional development banks, the biggest private water
and power business empires in the world are being assured lucrative
business environments by client South governments.

Country-level experiences on power and water privatization clearly
disprove the claim that privately-run firms are more efficient and
provide cheaper services. Continuously escalating rates and thus
increasingly reduced public access to services, unfulfilled promises of
infrastructure improvement and consequently greater risks to public
health, malleable regulatory systems, shady financial and management
transactions and processes, and extraordinary business perks are common
characteristics of privatization that demonstrate the exact opposite. As
it turns out, the privatization thrust that these institutions have made
contingent to the release of loans have simply provided big
multinationals another way to make guaranteed profits at the expense of
millions of consumers.

Typical of their propensity for duplicity, the IMF-World Bank officially
concedes that some mistakes have been made and recognizes some of the
=93social impacts of adjustment.=94 However, they have given no quarter in
the continued pursuit of their programs and policies. Instead, these
institutions merely performed some face-lifting to structural adjustment
programs in the year 2000, re-packaging them as PRSPs required for HIPC
eligibility and for loan approval. The policies have remained
essentially the same, with the dual purpose of ensuring loan repayments
and giving industrialized capitalist countries free rein over the
economies of the world.

World Wide Days of Resistance: October 1 to 12, 2004

The IMF-WB pay lip service to poverty reduction, civil-society
participation, democracy and transparency, while continuing on this path
of destruction. We cannot allow the poverty generation and crises
creation by these institutions to continue. Hence, we urge the
struggles, campaigns and mobilizations against these institutions in
both the South and the North to intensify and to move forward with a
renewed sense of urgency.

To mark the 60th year of these Bretton Woods institutions, let us unite
and mobilize in a Worldwide Days of Resistance to the IMF-World Bank and
their partner institutions during the first two weeks of October 2004.
Our global protests will coincide with the Annual Meeting of the IMF and
the WB on October 1-4 and continue through October 12, a day of
mobilizations in the Americas around injustices perpetuated on
indigenous peoples since the landing of Columbus in the Caribbean
Islands over 500 years ago.

Let us work together to make the Days of Resistance a resounding cry for
the end of the hegemony of these institutions. Let these days mark the
phase in our common struggle, Let us mobilize for a global expression of
unity of the peoples of the North and the South in the struggle to build
a new economic order founded on the economic, political and social
empowerment of all people to live fully human lives

Abolish illegitimate debt!
Stop the privatization of education, health, housing, water and power
services!
Stop the imposition of neoliberal economic policies!
End 60 years of destruction!
IMF-WB OUT NOW!

SIGNATORIES:
Please sign up by submitting your name in the space provided in
www.ifi-out.org or by sending a message to oct2004@ifi-out.org