Is the door ajar for the IMF to return to Argentina?

According to the International Monetary Fund, its purpose is to "oversee the international monetary system and monitor the financial and economic policies of its members. It keeps track of economic developments on a national, regional, and global basis, consulting regularly with member countries and providing them with macroeconomic and financial policy advice."

 

In practice, however, it is the key instrument in defense of the market (capitalist) economy and is the constant companion of multinational corporations, demanding the implementation of policies straight out of the market economist’s handbook: hacking down to size the State and its commercial entities, reducing salaries (especially in the State sector), putting the squeeze on State control of economic activity, breaking down market barriers, lowering corporate taxes, limiting the activities of central banks to strictly financial book keeping...lending money to straighten out critical financial difficulties... 

 

It’s "advise" is usually dished out to poor developing countries in what used to be known as the "Third World", not to advanced capitalist economies such as the United States of Northamerica, Germany, France, England...almost universally bringing forth the wrath of workers and State employees in the world’s underbelly, and the universal praise of the giant corporations and the local mass media whose pages are  backed by multinational capital.

 

One important additional function of the IMF, achieved by indirect pressure, is to guarantee the repayment of monsterous debts granted as "help" to poor countries--a policy implemented during the 1960’s and 70’s with special vigor in order to deal with the "problem" of excess capital in the world’s developed economies. Most of the poor countries who have received these debts find them completely impossibe to pay off. But in order to attempt to do so they must ask the IMF to monitor their finances.

 

An exception to that rule was Argentina in the wake of its dramatic melt down following 2001. When Néstor Kirchner came to power subsequently he decided not to accept the conditioning advise of the IMF and paid off the country’s debt to the world’s financial bodyguard in one hefty payment. Although that should have made the IMF and the community of international finance dance in their night slippers, Buenos Aires was criticized as breaking the rules and excluding itself from the international community.

 

Subsequent to paying the IMF $9.8 billion, President Kirchner, who recently passed away, commented laconically: "Don´t give us any more lessons because you have already brought much pain and hunger to Argentina." In explaining his government’s decision to break with the IMF, he said: "It was necessary and of great importance to break the bondage of the IMF because in 2003 an IMF official was more important than the presient of the country."

 

Not everyone agrees with the IMF’s recipes: "At present, although it may seem strange, it is possibe to say that the economic problems are not in Argentina nor in the developing countries but rather in the United States and in developed European countries, basically due to the decline in industrial production around the world." (Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman)

 

Nevertheless, Argentina has just agreed to have IMF officials oversee its statistical gathering methodology. Is this just a technical helping hand or does it suppose that the door is ajar and could be opened up for a future return of the IMF and its "neo-liberal" financial ideology?