The IMF has a history of inflicting suffering and cruelty on countries it is supposed to help.  It created a bloody crisis in Bolivia, and caused havoc in the emerging countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

It almost killed Argentina which, in 2004 blamed the IMF for its decade long crisis that impoverished tens of millions; while even an internal IMF report said that the organization had exacerbated the crisis in that country.

The IMF continues to hurt poor countries....it's MO is horrific.   It should be completely ignored.   However, like those corrupt, malicious, demented geezers, Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger, the IMF is given a podium on the Potomac, the land of the deficit hawks, and it is screeching for Social Security cuts.

As The Guardian reported last year: "Policies implemented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the global downturn further exacerbated the crisis in many countries, a leading thinktank said today.

".....the measures proposed were too restrictive for the countries involved and did not produce the longer-lasting economic growth predicted."

Dean Baker writes:  "Last week the IMF told the United States that it needs to start getting its budget deficit down. It put cutting Social Security at the top of the steps that the country should take to achieve deficit reduction. This one is more than a bit outrageous for two reasons.

"First, the IMF deserves a substantial share of the blame for the economic crisis that gave us big deficits in the first place.  The IMF is supposed to oversee the operations of the international financial system. According to standard economic theory, capital is supposed to flow from rich countries like the United States to poor countries to finance their development. In other words, the United States should be having a trade surplus, which would correspond to the money that we are investing in poor countries to finance their development.

"However, the IMF messed up its management of financial crises so badly in the last 15 years that poor countries decided that they had to accumulate huge amounts of currency reserves in order to avoid ever being forced to deal with the IMF. This meant that capital was flowing in huge amounts in the wrong direction. One result of this reverse flow was that the United States ran a huge trade deficit instead of a trade surplus.

"The other reason that the IMF’s call for cutting Social Security benefits is infuriating is the incredible hypocrisy involved. The average Social Security benefit is just under $1,200 a month. No one can collect benefits until they reach the age of 62. By contrast, many IMF economists first qualify for benefits in their early 50s. They can begin drawing pensions at age 51 or 52 of more than $100,000 a year.

"This means that we have IMF economists, who failed disastrously at their jobs, who can draw six figure pensions at age 52, telling ordinary workers that they have to take a cut in their $14,000 a year Social Security benefits that they can’t start getting until age 62."

Like the Roman Catholic Church which lost any claim to moral authority it may have had because of its criminal cover-up of clergy child abuse, the IMF, which has been criminal in its economic and financial policies, should be isolated and ignored.