tisonyli: that's self-evident. what's been less so is the transformation of the imf since the abandonment of bretton woods. you'd have thought that it'd have been dismantled as the arrangement was, but instead it was given a kind of incoherent purview of currency stabilization, which morphed as the new american empire---god that hardt & negri term annoys me, so vague, so nothing except a device that allows for the maintenance of other terms like imperialism, but ripped out of lenin's analysis of monopoly capitalism and made trans-historical---just what neo-marxists need is a repetition of the most dysfunctional aspect of diamat---anyway----as the new american empire/global capitalist order took shape, the imf became a shock institution the primary function of which was to exploit currency crisis and debt problems as a device to forcibly "integrate" southern hemisphere countries into the neo-colonial order that we laughingly call globalization--so it transformed from being a brake on crisis to being an engine for crisis and its exploitation.
so the statements coming from strauss-kahn are in a sense strange---but that they're only vapor as far as the american press is concerned is predictable--within the current arrangement, the one which is falling apart, the imf is transparently an arm of american neo-colonialism. but in the emergent order, the one that will more or less have to include transnational regulatory institutions (and probably some type of international law to lean on), the imf--still an arm of american neo-colonialism--is jockeying for position as the jump-off point. that's why i made this thread, really---as a way of starting to track this joickeying for position, which will have everything to do with the nature and characteristics of these new mechanisms.
that they're coming is getting more and more obvious.
to wit:
Quote:
Economists call for EU-wide banking rescue operation
* David Gow in Brussels
A group of leading economists today called on EU leaders to mount a coordinated Europe-wide rescue operation for the continent's banks to prevent a "once-in-a-lifetime" crisis spiralling out of control.
The 10 economists, including Willem Buiter, a professor at the London School of Economics and a former Bank of England rate-setter, warn that Europe faces a repeat of the 1930s, with the savings of hundreds of millions threatened unless governments act together.
Their "call to action", published by the DIW institute in Berlin, comes as France summons British, German and Italian leaders to an emergency summit in Paris this weekend to draw up a common response to the financial crisis.
The French finance minister Christine Lagarde last night rebutted reports that president Nicolas Sarkozy, the current EU president, would present a €300bn (£236m) bail-out plan similar to the US rescue scheme, dubbed a "Euro-TARP" or troubled asset relief programme.
The 10 economists stop short of demanding a similar scheme, saying the key problem in Europe is high leverage among international banks rather than lack of liquidity. "Hence the EU contribution must be centred on a recapitalisation of the banking sector, through the injection of public equity or through mandatory debt-to-equity conversions," they said.
They added: "This has to be done at the EU level (eg through the European Investment Bank). The current approach of rescuing one institution after another with national funds will lead to a Balkanisation of the European banking sector."
In a dire warning to policymakers, they wrote: "Trust among financial institutions is disappearing and there are risks that fear will spread more widely. Turmoil in financial markets must be stopped before it causes major damage to the real economy. If the turmoil produces credit market paralysis, jobs and businesses will be destroyed on a massive scale.
"A further weakening of the real economy would put more loans at risk and create a vicious cycle of falling asset prices, deteriorating ability to repay loans and diminishing credit flows."
The signatories are: Alberto Alesina (Harvard), Richard Baldwin (Geneva), Tito Boeri (Bocconi, Milan), Willem Buiter, Francesco Giavazzi (Bocconi), Daniel Gros (CEPS, Brussels), Stefano Micossi (Rome), Guido Tabellini (Bocconi), Charles Wyplosz (Geneva) and Klaus Zimmermann (DIW, Berlin)
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Economists call for EU-wide banking rescue operation | Business | guardian.co.uk
which is interesting as an indicator of the extent to which the creation of such institutions is beginning to seem the most logical and effective way to prevent other such crises from happening, and for dealing with the consequences of this one (which may be 2 different ways of saying the same thing).
and that is interesting as an index of the speed with which the neoliberal consensus, the monoculture, la pensée unique, is coming unravelled.