from "Power Unto Itself," an op-ed piece in the Dec 10 Financial Times, by
Harvard shock therapist Jeffrey Sachs:
"The world waits to see what the [International Monetary] Fund will demand
of country X, assuming that the IMF has chosen the best course of action.
The world accepts as normal the idea that crucial details of IMF programmes
should remain confidential, even though those 'details' affect the
well-being of millions. Staff at the Fund, meanwhile, are unaccountable for
their decisions.
The people most affected by these policies have little knowledge or
input. In Korea, the IMF insisted that all presidential candidates
immediately 'endorse' an agreement they had no part in drafting or
negotiating - and no time to understand.
The situation is out of hand. However useful the IMF may be to the world
community, it defies logic to believe that a small group of 1,000
economists on 19th Street in Washington should dictate the economic
conditions of life to 75 developing countries [the number presently under
an IMF program] with around 1.4bn people. These people cosntitute 57
percent of the developing world outisde of China and India (which are not
under IMF programmes). Since perhaps half of the IMF's professional time is
devoted to these countries - with the rest tied up in surveillance of
advanced countries, management, research, and other tasks - about 500 staff
cover the 75 countries. That is an average of about seven economists per
country.
One might suspect that seven staffers would not be enough to get a very
sophisticated view of what is happening. That suspicion would be right...."
