STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT LOANS NOW FOR ADVANCED COUNTRIES

Updated 7/17/2011


Have you heard of the saying...'first they came for the Jews, then the Catholics, then the gays...and finally they came for me?"

No longer are SALs confined to lesser developed countries. Today, after the 2007-8 economic crisis, we are seeing quite advanced countries such as Iceland, Greece and Ireland, in line for the same treatment: loans with conditions.

See this from the IMF:


IMF Approves €30 Bln Loan for Greece on Fast Track


May 9, 2010
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2010/new050910a.htm

IMF and EU loans come with conditions: the cutting of social benefits to Greeks. We are witnessing vast protests in Athens this week due to this type of austerity measure. See this:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/28/news/international/greece_debt_crisis/

At this point, you might be interested in this:
http://www.myloansconsolidated.com/2011/06/26/gerald-celente-people-are-never-going-to-be-free-until-we-break-the-banks/

Say you have a mortgage, but you have fallen into financial difficulties. Your house then defaults back to the bank. This is, in a nutshell, how banks acquire physical assets. On the international stage, banks and countries that loan, can acquire physical assets if loans aren't paid back. In the future, I expect to see large chunks of US real estate being acquired by China and other countries which are in a more stable financial situation.


Greece's debt was at 127% of its GNP when it decided to take out more loans. The US' debt is at roughly 90% of its GNP. The so-called solutions are a) to pile on more debt to pay for the interest on the old debt; b) 'austerity' measures for the masses; and c) buying up the debtor country's physical assets.

I liked how Robert explained the blame game, as countries fail to repay their debt:

'It's remarkable that IOs like the IMF and WorldBank continue to champion SAPs as the vehicles for economic growth, given the obvious failures since the 1980s. Ha-Joon Chang's summarized the typical attitude of the IMF/WorldBank in his lecture. He talked about how, when SAPs were producing bad results early on, people kept saying, "we just need more time." Over time, when the programs still failed to produce positive results, they said its because countries did not abide by recommendations. Then, if a country did follow the recipe but the policies were unsuccessful, IMF/WorldBank folks would say the country's government was corrupt, that their culture is incompatible with the programs, or that the country suffered from bad geography. How long does it take before someone can step back and admit that the policies might just be wrong?'
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How did LDCs get into this position in the first place? The causes can be traced back to European colonization of pre capitalist countries from the 15th century to the 19th century. The colonization disrupted and virtually ended, pre-capitalist economies which were largely based on subsistence agriculture. A capitalist economic model was imposed on these militarily weaker societies by the French, British, Germans, Japanese. These countries then became the resource basket for the wealthy. For example, Congo's agricultural crops were decimated to make way for the rubber industry.

Independence came after WWII, but it could be called an imperfect de-colonization. So while LDCs achieved a formal separation from imperialist powers, financial structures were set up to retain their dependency.

That's how the core dependency theory explains the situation. A class analysis does a better job to explain why the working masses will bear the brunt of a state's debt, whether it's a LDC or a powerful state like the US.