Activities of the IMF

During the past year, the IMF has both expressed a new, expanded understanding of its role in the world economy and been involved in attempting to stave off economic collapse throughout Asia. In the following pages, the focus is on exploring some of the more recent criticisms of the IMF, from several different perspectives.

According to conservative, free-market Republicans, the IMF is wrong to provide the Asian bankers and multinationals with bailouts. There are differences between the various stances. For example, Pat Buchanan opposed the bailout because it cost the U.S. taxpayers, which he believed was inevitable with free trade. He also noted that the bailout protected bankers and portfolio managers unjustifiably. They were allowed to take their gains, so they should also have to deal with their losses (Piling on the bailout, 1998).

Many other conservatives, including Jack Kemp, oppose bailouts because they are connected to IMF policies which conservatives believe are inherently an

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ard a more regulated and restrictive economy (Forbes, 1996). On the other hand, liberals criticize the IMF's tendency to impose austerity measures that place the heaviest burden on the poorest people. They note that the IMF is more concerned with creating measures that protect banks and other large institutions than they are in ensuring the well-being of the mass of the population. Indeed, it is the large institutions that the IMF is focused on, and it is true that the population feels the impact of the austerity measures in ways that the financial institutions do not. For example, David Corn (1998) quoted Walden Bello as noting that Korea has what they call "IMF suicides", in which laid-off workers kill themselves and their families. Bello noted that the IMF lies when it says that it works with public organizations and economists in the countries it works with. He explained that the IMF works solely with governments and their bureaucrats and that the IMF policies mean increases in joblessness, homelessness, and hunger for the masses of people. In Congress, opposition also focused on the human rights records of some of the countries, including Indonesia, which obtained funding from the IMF. Representative Bernie Sanders no
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Approximate Word count = 2518
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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