# The hospital that makes you sicker



## Ambrose (May 5, 2009)

Με αφορμή αυτά που λέει ο καθηγητής Robert Wallace εδώ για τον ρόλο του IMF και της Διεθνούς Τράπεζας στη διεθνή μπίζνα του κρέατος , θυμήθηκα την περίπτωση του γιατρού που πας να σε γιατρέψει και βγαίνεις χειρότερα. Μια συνέντευξη του John Stiglitz, που κέρδισε το Νόμπελ Οικονομίας το 2001:

*The Hospital That Makes You Sicker:
the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
by Joseph Stiglitz
New Internationalist magazine, March 2004​*
NI: You say you have been forced to the conclusion that the IMF works in the interests of Western capital. This seems a remarkable view for a former chief economist of the World Bank.
JS: I watched carefully what the IMF had done, the mistakes that it had made in crisis countries in East Asia, Latin America, Africa and the economies in transition. The mistakes were sufficiently frequent that they clearly weren't just an accident - as an academic you look for patterns.
There were a couple of obvious explanations. One was that they were incompetent, stupid people. But that argument is just not persuasive - they pay among the highest wages, they get good people.
You could say it was bad economic models. But there is an array of economic models out there and they chose to use ones that led to wrong predictions, wrong policies and really negative consequences.
So why did they choose them? One is left with a possible answer that they had different objectives, that their objective in going into a country was not, for example, to keep employment as high as possible or to minimize poverty.
And then of course it all starts to make sense. You ask: 'Who makes the decision, and on whose behalf do they make those decisions?' You look at the decision-making structure - at the IMF the United States is the only country with a veto, other countries are represented by central bank governors and finance ministers. They were looking at the world with a particular perspective, a particular ideology that was in accord with their interests. And their interests were to make sure the creditors got paid. That took precedence over what would be good for the country.
Occasionally I almost got them to say that explicitly. For instance, senior people would say: 'We can't have bankruptcies or standstills, that would be an abrogation of the sanctity of the debt contract'. And I'd say: 'Well, what about the social contract?'


Η συνέχεια εδώ


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## Costas (May 6, 2009)

Καλό, ευχαριστώ!


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