This past weekend, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank hosted a meeting of the “world’s top financial and banking officials.” At similar meetings in the past, leaders from poor countries have been forced to listen to leaders from rich, western countries tell them how to restructure their economies and “modernize their capital markets” in order to pay back their loans and be considered successful. This meeting was slightly different. This meeting was called to discuss the “global impact of the collapse in the American housing sector.” The implication of this statement is that for such a societal slump to be occurring, it must be reflecting a downfall of the economy. Libya, Argentina, and the Republic of Congo led the poor countries in accusing the Western Banks of ignoring the warning signs and seeing this crisis coming: now the entire world’s economy is bearing the burdens. These countries, the poor countries, are calling themselves the “new driving force” now that a western state has shown weakness and irresponsibility. In the eyes of the poor, borrowing countries, the Western states and banks dropped the ball and let them down by being over ambitious and investing too much: this led to endless criticism of the western states and banks by poorer countries that normally just get lectured by leaders from those countries loaning them money.
I was in Washington D.C. this past weekend and the protesting was as bad if not worse than it sounds in reports. All through Georgetown (relatively close to the IMF headquarters) stores had their windows smashed in and the attacks certainly were not random: these stores included J. Crew, Bath and Body Works, and Club Monaco. The theme linking them seemed to be upper class stores that clearly serve the rich; the same rich who build factories in these poor countries. I think we can all understand why a country wouldn’t want to house factories for rich, American clothing companies, and thus why protesters would be against these stores. Protesters were indirectly supporting the citizens of the poor countries whose qualities of life we are not taking into consideration.
1 Comment
October 24, 2007 at 9:47 pm
My favorite paper (the Independent) now has a blog, and there was a post with some thoughts about the recent IMF meetings. The author doesn’t have too much positive to say about the meetings, but he raises what is the key point: a lack of leadership in the IMF.