IMF
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From the Rockies to Stockholm: ignoring the global crisis
As I write, the government leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US – are meeting in the remote town of Kananaskis, Alberta, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, for intense discussions. This will be the 51st summit meeting of the top… Continue reading
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How the International Monetary Fund Underdevelops Africa: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2025)
At the start of 2025, Sudan registered an alarming debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio of 252%. This means that the country’s total public debt is 2.5 times the size of its entire annual economic output. It is not hard to understand why Sudan is in such dire straits: as we outlined in last week’s newsletter,… Continue reading
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Inclusive economics and the IMF
The great and the good have just finished attending a special World Economic Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The theme of the conference for the over 1000 delegates from corporations, governments and international agencies was global cooperation and inclusive growth. In other words, how to reverse the growing international trade wars and rising inequality of… Continue reading
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IMF’s pinkwashing has multifold effects on women’s health
ActionAid and Public Services International recently published a new report – The Care Contradiction – looking into how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs are impacting women workers. The report shows that although the IMF has recently come up with a Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, its actions in the field of building gender justice essentially add up to… Continue reading
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‘The Canary in the Coal Mine’: Sri Lanka’s Crisis is a Chronicle Foretold
Sri Lanka’s acute economic crisis and sovereign debt default, along with its people’s uprising in 2022, has drawn attention across the world. It is described as the ‘canary in the coal mine’, that is, a harbinger of the likely future for other global south countries. Eric Toussaint, spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of… Continue reading
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What Was Covid Really About? Triggering A Multi-Trillion Dollar Global Debt Crisis.”Ramping up an Imperialist Strategy”?
Thursday, 7 July 2022 — Global Research Covid, Capitalism, Friedrich Engels and Boris Johnson By Colin Todhunter “And thus it renders more and more evident the great central fact that the cause of the miserable condition of the working class is to be sought, not in these minor grievances, but in the capitalistic system itself.” Friedrich Engels, Continue reading
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All That Glitters Is Not Necessarily Russian Gold
The “rules-based international order” – as in “our way or the highway” – is unraveling much faster than anyone could have predicted. The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China are starting to design a new monetary and financial system bypassing the U.S. dollar, supervised by Sergei Glazyev and intended to compete with the Bretton Woods… Continue reading
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Why Comparing Chinese Africa Investment to Western Colonialism Is No Joke
“Why China Is in Africa” (12/16/21) is a question Trevor Noah took up last month for Comedy Central‘s Daily Show. As with many of the topics taken up by the Daily Show, the issue is no joke: China has a large and growing economic presence in many African countries. The China/Africa deals cry out for analysis: Are they… Continue reading
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IMF and debt: a new consensus?
There is much talk among ‘progressive’ economists that the IMF and the World Bank have turned over a new leaf. Gone are the days of supporting fiscal austerity, demanding that national governments get public debt levels down and insisting on conditions for countries borrowing IMF-WB funds that their governments privatise their state assets, deregulate markets… Continue reading
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Ecuador: reversing the pandemic slump?
The leftist candidate Andrés Arauz took the lead in the first round of the presidential elections in Ecuador. Arauz won 31.5 per cent of the vote, putting him about 11 percentage points clear of his nearest rivals. It was unclear who Arauz would face in the run-off. Indigenous leader Yaku Pérez and Guillermo Lasso, a… Continue reading
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Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington D.C.
The kisan agitation at the gates of Fortress Delhi has forced even the corporate media to take note of the corporate drive to capture control of the remaining non-corporate sectors of the country’s economy, including its agriculture; the phrase “Ambani-Adani” is now a popular term for this process. Continue reading
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Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism
In a short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”. Continue reading
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US Hits “Search and Destroy” Against China’s New Silk Roads
The relentless paranoia about the Chinese “threat” has much to do with the exit ramp offered by Beijing to a Global South permanently indebted to IMF/World Bank exploitation. Continue reading
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The IMF smokescreen
In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the IMF again tackled the issue of climate change, global warming and what to do about it. As it did last year, the IMF recognised that climate change was a burning issue for humanity and the planet. But this time it claimed that there were policy options that… Continue reading
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IMF Seizes on Pandemic to Pave Way for Privatization in 81 Countries
76 of the 91 loans the IMF has negotiated since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic come attached with demands for deep cuts to public services and policies that benefit corporations over people. Continue reading
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China’s Belt and Road (BRI): Investment and Lending Practices in Developing Countries. Is There a “Debt Trap”?
China’s One Belt One Road project has been a great source of speculation for some time since its announcement by the Communist Party of China and China has since fielded a barrage of endless accusations that they are seeking to assert “global hegemony” and consequently engaging in imperialism since then. Continue reading
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Corona Tyranny – and Death by Famine
By the end of 2020 more people will have died from hunger, despair and suicide than from the corona disease. We, the world, is facing a famine-pandemic of biblical proportions. This real pandemic will overtake the “COVID-19 pandemic” by a long shot. The hunger pandemic reminds of the movie the Hunger Games, as it is… Continue reading
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Let’s get fiscal!
How to grease the aching wheels of a sickening world capitalist economy? Let’s get fiscal is the universal cry of economists and policy makers. The COVID meltdown and impending global recession is forcing authorities to consider fiscal stimulus. Continue reading
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Ecuador’s Austerity Measures, Repression Based on Lies AP Happily Spread
Bernie Sanders tweeted an Associated Press article in the LA Times (10/14/19) about Ecuador’s recent protests, in which eight protesters were killed in 11 days. “Economic elites keep pushing austerity worldwide, making life unbearable for working people,” Sanders declared. Unfortunately, that AP piece was itself a good example of how elites push for austerity. Continue reading
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Burn, Neoliberalism, Burn By Pepe Escobar
Neoliberalism is – literally – burning. And from Ecuador to Chile, South America, once again, is showing the way. Against the vicious, one-size-fits-all IMF austerity prescription, which deploys weapons of mass economic destruction to smash national sovereignty and foster social inequality, South America finally seems poised to reclaim the power to forge its own history. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 