>But Brad, he is forbidden to use the money for public health.
>
> > >Brad DeLong wrote:
> > >> I think the U.S. sanctions policy on Iraq is mistaken and
> > >> counterproductive. But I don't think Clinton is morally culpable for
> > >> the fact that the Iraqi government prefers not to spend its foreign
> > >> exchange on pharmaceuticals and nutrition but to husband it for...
> > >> other purposes.
> > >
> > >Brad, Albright said that the sanctions would last as long as Saddam
> > >remained in
> > >power. Saddam cannot buy water purification inputs which are much more
> > >important than drugs. Yes, Clinton is responsible.
> >
> > As I said, I think U.S. policy toward Iraq is a *big* mistake. But
> > that does not mean that you should ignore the fact that Saddam
> > Hussein wishes to use his foreign exchange for other purposes than
> > public health.
> >
> > Brad DeLong
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
And more generally speaking, all governments under the tutelage of
the IMF have had to cut expenditures on public health, education, etc.
***** Unfortunately, it is not apparent that the imposition of SAPs
proved effective in stabilizing economies and improving the lives of
the poor. The amount of debt owed by countries to their creditors
rose from $616 billion in 1980 to roughly $2.2 trillion at the end of
1997. "Structural adjustment did not reduce debts, cut poverty, nor
return countries to the path of growth" (ibid.). To this day,
creditor governments have insisted on compliance with IMF/WB economic
adjustment programs as a condition for further aid and debt relief
from other donors (Oxfam 1999). While generally less that 20 per cent
of international debt is owed specifically to the IMF, this
"gatekeeper" role between donors and borrowing countries has elevated
significantly the power of the IMF in international financial
negotiations.
On the other hand, SAPs did succeed in returning borrowed dollars to
wealthy nations of the north. Between 1983 and 1989, poor countries
paid $242 billion more to creditors than they received in new loans;
"the net transfer of resources from developed to developing countries
changed from a positive flow of nearly $43 billion in 1981 to a
negative flow of $33 billion in 1988" (World Bank Global Development
Finance 1998 in Kim et.al. 2000). In the IMF's own evaluation of the
"enhanced structural adjustment facility", it found that in
sub-Saharan Africa average income growth per person fell by 0.5
percent a year during the first half of the 1990s (Oxfam 1999). In
addition, on average only approximately half of the targeted
reduction in national budget deficits was achieved, progress in
reducing inflation was limited and savings rates (which determine
domestic capacity for investment and future growth) were unchanged.
"By any standards, this is poor performance. Measured against
sub-Saharan Africa's needs, it represents a disaster" (ibid.).
SAPs built an overhang of debt payments that cripples the capacity of
southern governments to invest in economic and social growth. The
human costs of economic stagnation and neglect of real development
are staggering, but this seems to have little impact on the way the
international financial institutions conduct their business. The
outgoing Chief Economist of the IMF, Michael Mussa, has stated that
"Our programmes are like medicine. Some of the medicine has harmful
side-effects, and there are real questions about what the dosage
ought to be. The best that can be hoped for is that we are
prescribing more or less the right medicine in more or less the right
dosage" (in Oxfam 1999). If this were a situation of individual
medical treatment, the IMF could be held liable for malpractice.
However, because governments of the south have largely been excluded
from substantive policy-making and public participation has been
ignored until late, macroeconomic adjustment policies have continued
to ravage public expenditures for health and development with
impunity.
<http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/Organizations/healthnet/HUpapers/gender/b
angser.html> *****
The dictatorship of the ruling class -- one dollar, one vote! -- has
pushed the poor into perpetual debt servitude, which, according to
Michael Mussa, is "more or less the right medicine in more or less
the right dosage" (a suggestive metaphor here). Consequences for
public health have been disastrous. And the same dictatorship
prefers enforcing intellectual property rights to providing cheap
drugs to poor nations in the interest of public health.
Yoshie
