Check It Out for Monday, May 11th
Michael Hudson at Counterpunch writes Gordon Brown spilling the beans on the IMF and its practices.
"Last month the G-20 authorized the International Monetary Fund to increase its loan resources to $1 trillion. It’s not hard to see why. Weakening currencies in the post-Soviet states threaten to raise default rates on foreign-currency mortgages as collapse of the Baltic real estate bubble drags down Swedish banks, while the Hungarian property plunge threatens Austrian banks. It seems reasonable to infer that creditor-nation banks hope to be bailed out. The IMF is expected to lend the Baltic, central European and other debtor-country governments money to pay them. These hapless debtor economies are then to follow IMF “conditionalities” to squeeze enough money out of their populations to pay foreign creditors – and repay the Fund by imposing yet more onerous taxes on their labor and industry, making them even more high-cost and therefore pushing them even further into trade and credit dependency. This is why there have been so many riots recently in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, as was the case for so many decades throughout the Latin American countries that introduced the term “IMF riot” to the global vocabulary.
"For fifty years the IMF has organized such payouts to creditor nations. Loans are made to debtor-country governments to “promote exchange-rate and price stability.” In practice this means pouring tens of billions of dollars into currency markets to make bad gambles against raiders. This is supposed to avert the beggar-my-neighbor nationalism and financial protectionism that aggravated depression in the 1930s. But the practical effect of IMF lending is to demand that debtor countries impose onerous IMF “conditionalities” that stifle their domestic markets. This is why the IMF was left with almost no customers until last year’s debt crisis deranged the world’s foreign exchange markets.
"It is supposed to be merely incidental that the largest IMF shareholders, the United States and Britain, happen to be the major creditor nations and their banks the main beneficiaries of IMF loans. But in a Parliamentary question-and-answer session on May 6, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown spilled the beans. Under pressure for his notorious “light-touch regulation” as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1997-2007), he undid half a century of rhetorical pretense by announcing that he was pressuring the IMF to bail ot Britain in its nasty dispute with the Icelandic owners of a British bank that went under. He was in a position to know the nitty-gritty of who owed what and which nation’s monetary authorities were responsible for which banks. So when he said that he was strong-arming the IMF and other organizations to force Iceland’s government to pay for his own government’s mistakes, he must have known this was breaking the unwritten law of pretending that the IMF is not the servant of creditor nations in bilateral disputes with smaller economies.
David Cronin at IPS News explains the continuing damaging aftermath of the Gaza attack.
"The destruction to property caused by the 23-day bombardment which the Gaza Strip endured in December and January remains visible in many parts of its main city.
"In the Izbet Abed Rabo area last week, a herd of goats was steered through a street where all that remains of many houses is slabs of concrete and girders piled on top of each other. White tents provided by different United Nations agencies are the only shelter that the residents of these flattened buildings now have.
"Despite pledges running into billions of dollars made at a donors conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh in March, work on transforming this apocalyptic vision into a place where those uprooted can live with a semblance of dignity has not yet begun, because Israel is restricting the importation of sorely-needed building material.
"Amidst all this, the psychological effects of the attack are less apparent, but the preliminary findings of an ongoing survey being conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) suggest that few people, if any, are left unscarred.
"In a sample of 374 children studied, over 73 percent thought they were going to die during the violence. Almost 68 percent of them - all aged between 6 and 16 - fear that a similar attack will come again, and 41 percent expressed a strong desire for revenge.
"Of the parents examined by mental health professionals as part of the same study, 59 percent of fathers and 75 percent of mothers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Among the symptoms detected were that over 59 percent of these adults were anxious about death, that half of them feared heart attacks, and about 15 percent feared contracting cancer because of exposure to weapons such as white phosphorous.
"Meanwhile, 82 percent of parents observed that their children have been behaving aggressively since the attack, and 52 percent reported that their children had emotional problems.
" 'Everybody lost something in this war,' GCMHP spokesman Husam El- Nounou told IPS. 'Some lost friends and relations, some lost parts of their bodies. Others lost property and money; others a feeling of security and protection. It was a very cruel feeling. I've never felt so near to death as during that period. There was no place to where we could escape.' "
Matthew Kaufmann writes at the Hartford Courant (h/t BuzzFlash) that gaps in mental health screening are ongoing for troops heading to Iraq and Afghanistan:
"More than two years ago, Congress ordered the military to implement tighter psychiatric screening for combat troops to keep mentally troubled service members out of the war zone.
"But new pre-deployment data obtained by the Courant indicate there are still gaps in the military's screening policies, and that the military is still arranging professional mental health evaluations for only a tiny fraction of the troops it is sending into battle.
"Pre-deployment screening records show that in 2008 and early 2009, barely more than 1 percent of deploying troops were referred to a mental-health professional as part of their pre-deployment preparations. Even among troops who acknowledged seeking mental health care in the year before deploying, nearly nine out of 10 were deemed mentally fit without seeing a mental-health professional.
"Service members who acknowledge past mental healthcare are typically interviewed by medical technicians, who decide if a mental health referral is warranted. After a series of stories in the Courant in 2006 detailing deficiencies in mental-health screening and treatment for combat troops, Congress instructed the military to establish specific guidelines for determining when those referrals should be made.
"But a Defense Department spokesman acknowledged last week that specific guidelines were never developed.
"The number of mental health referrals is little changed from 2007, even as the military grapples with a steady increase in depression and stress among combat troops. Just today, an American soldier was in custody after killing five fellow troops at Baghdad's Camp Liberty in a shooting that CNN says took place at a military clinic for treating stress.
"Since the beginning of the war on terror, more than 210 service members have killed themselves while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the suicide rate has risen significantly since the beginning of those campaigns. Army wide, there have been 64 confirmed or suspected suicides in the first four months of this year, with the suicide rate among soldiers now exceeding the demographically adjusted civilian rate."
Comments