Well, somebody is fucking loaded, and it might not be just the IMF.
Over the weekend, someone on the Financial Times (U.K.) copy desk conjured up what is surely the first headline pun about the International Monetary Fund: “IMFing loaded.”
The story it bannered was that the G-20, in “one of the feelgood moments” of its meeting, had agreed to pour $1 trillion into the IMF to supposedly pump up the world economy.
The copy editor who wrote this headline (thanx to J.L. for pointing it out) could also have been a Twitter adept confessing in shorthand, “I am effing loaded.” In any case, the staid paper subsequently changed the feelgood headline to “Supercharged IMF.” Same copy editor, but this time confessing that he was smoking dope with the aid of a supercharger? (And why shouldn’t a newspaper copy editor want to get high with his industry so low these days?)
As to the story itself: Giving the IMF this much money can’t be good news for most of the rest of the world. So-called developing countries have long regarded the IMF as a bully for forcing them to enact austerity programs that starve their own citizenry so that foreign debt can be paid.
This is not as simple as just seeing that these countries pay off their rightful obligations; they’re more like sharecroppers owing their souls to the company store.
To see one view of how this works, read Michael Hudson’s piece on GlobalResearch.ca, “The Financial War Against Iceland: Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare.” Yes, Iceland is not a developing country, but Hudson gets to the topic of the IMF’s impact on the Third World.