The very slow but steady progress among international financial institutions (IFIs) towards recognition that their projects need to comply with fundamental workers’ rights could be reversed if the World Bank adopts the draft social and environmental safeguards policy revision that was leaked about ten days ago. It will be discussed by the World Bank’s Committee on Development…
Some analysts have speculated that among the three bodies that make up the European ‘Troika’ – European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund – the IMF has acted as a moderating force against the pro-austerity and deregulatory tendencies of the first two. For instance, a New York Times (NYT) article last December stated that…
Last week an IMF working paper* from the Fund’s research department found no evidence to back up the notion of a ‘magical threshold’ in the level of national indebtedness, above which economic growth falls off dramatically. Indeed it looks like the theory may have encouraged politicians to confuse cause and effect with disastrous results. Hopefully this paper is…
Peter Bakvis, who runs the global unions office in Washington DC, was at the annual meetings of the International Financial Institutions (IMF and World Bank) in Tokyo last weekend, and reports here on developments in the global campaign for a Robin Hood Tax. As EU governments (11 so far) commit to introducing a Financial Transactions Tax…
Peter Bakvis is the Washington DC officer of Global Unions. Here he reports on the IMF’s approach – in theory good, but in practice poor – to union rights and labour standards. Last month the IMF posted a six-page “Factsheet: The IMF’s Advice on Labor Market Issues”, which tries to present a rationale for the…
The IMF used to be a cornerstone of the neoliberal Washington consensus that played havoc with developing countries’ economies in the name of ‘structural adjustment’ in the 1980s and 90s. Since then, campaigners including trade unions have pushed back, and demanded that the IMF justify its policies. Here, the head of the Global Unions’ Washington…
Claiming that large-scale reforms of labour markets and pensions in euro-zone countries will deliver a surge in economic growth, IMF officials have urged that deregulatory reforms “should be implemented without delay”. When combined with product market reforms, the Fund asserts that labour reforms will boost the zone’s GDP by 4½% over five years. However a…