From X-22

This sentence is a LOL you have got to be F..king kidding me statement!
“The IMF was created in that context to prevent the very global imbalances and mercantilist trade practices”

From my old notes:
The 1944 Breton Woods Agreement established the IMF and the World Bank because “The stock of gold grew slowly; the stocks of dollars and pounds could grow without limit. Member countries accepted the obligation to treat the two alike. In practice this meant they had to accept inflation or appreciate their exchange rate.” The IMF/World Bank used Structural Adjustment Policies, SAPs, to open up countries to exploitation by corporations. Instead of a British Empire overtly colonizing the world, heavily criticized by a voting public, we have Corporate and Banking interests united in the covert control of whole nations in the name of profit. [AKA mercantilist trade practices]

Structural Adjustment Policies are economic policies which countries must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans and help them make debt repayments on the older debts owed to commercial banks, governments and the World Bank. Although SAPs are designed for individual countries but have common guiding principles and features which include export-led growth; privatisation and liberalisation; and the efficiency of the free market.

SAPs often result in deep cuts in programmes like education, health and social care…

By devaluing the currency and simultaneously removing price controls, the immediate effect of a SAP is.. that riots are a frequent result.

http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html

Text:

James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy

Pretty much nails it. 👇

After the Second World War, the United States underwrote the reconstruction of the global economy, opening its markets and absorbing much of the excess output the rest of the world generated. This was not simply generosity, it was a deliberate strategy to stabilize allies, contain rivals, and institutionalize an open trading system around the dollar.

The IMF was created in that context to prevent the very global imbalances and mercantilist trade practices that had helped destabilize the interwar economy. Its mandate was clear, promote monetary stability, discourage competitive devaluations, and act as a backstop against systemic fragmentation. Yet as global trade tensions re-emerge and geopolitical chokepoints are increasingly weaponized, from tariffs to strategic waterways like the Strait of Hormuz, the Fund appears largely relegated to commentary.

Now a retiring IMF chief economist, one of the high priests of technocratic global governance, warns of the very dynamics the institution was designed to prevent. The irony is thick, and telling. The same institution that presided over, and often rationalized, decades of liberalization and adjustment now laments the return of the beggar-thy-neighbour tactics it was ostensibly created to stop. For investors, that irony is not a footnote, it is a signal: the guardians of the postwar order are no longer managing the risk, they are merely narrating it.

TEXT from retiring IMF chief economist

Michael Pettis@michaelxpettis

FT: “The world economy is at risk from the “tit-for-tat” economic warfare breaking out between nations, the IMF’s outgoing chief economist has warned.

” What many in the IMF have trouble understanding, and what Joan Robinson explained in 1937, is that trade conflict doesn’t begin when some economies begin to retaliate after their increasingly onerous trade deficits lead to domestic political problems, but rather when mercantilist economies begin to implement wage-suppressing policies that lead to persistent, beggar-thy-neighbor trade surpluses. The IMF was created in 1944 to help manage unsustainable capital imbalances. By noticing the associated trade imbalances only after the consequences had led to deficit-economy retaliation, the IMF has been pretty much asleep at the wheel.”

Financial Times: Tit-for-tat’ trade warfare threatens global economy, says IMF chief economist

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WIKI:

The Financial Times is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikkei, with core editorial offices across Britain, the United States and continental Europe.