The IMF: Violating Women since 1945

[aelf]

The IMF is much more concerned with a country repaying its outstanding loans than anything else. This typically involves exploiting the natural resources and the local population instead of helping the country as a whole. This tends to exacerbate the problems instead of solving them.

This. AFAIK, the IMF really isn't there to help with the war on poverty or even to fight recession, at least not directly - that's the World Bank. What the IMF does is to try and get countries out of the hole they've dug, often at the behest of others, often by digging a hole elsewhere in order to bury it. Particular institutional concerns lead to oversight and mistakes caused by the particular institutional concerns. It's almost like a law of nature.

 

[Xanikk999]

Read better what was written:

So almost everybody in Korea works overtime every week.
The statistic doesn't say how much more.

Still isnt that much. People in lower level management positions in many companies in this country may end up working way more then 40 hours a week.

Also in some places people are nearly required to have at least two jobs to pay the bills if they do not have the education for a higher level career. This is common in my area where its very expensive to live.

 

[aelf]

40 hours is 8 hours a day, five days a week. That's not that much.

I think you'd find that in these East Asian neoliberal havens (for lack of a better term), people work quite a bit more than that. I think I can safely say that where I'm from, a 9-hour working day is easily the minimum for most people, in many cases not accounting for unpaid overtime work.

Read better what was written:

So almost everybody in Korea works overtime every week.
The statistic doesn't say how much more.

I think it's hard to get a definite statistic because there's almost certainly a lot of under-reporting. Most people work in jobs that nominally require a certain number of hours of work a day but are understood to actually require more than that. In the spirit of neoliberal competitiveness, employers have a lot of scope for extracting as many man-hours as possible from their employees without paying more as a means of increasing productivity while minimising extra costs.

 

[Takhisis]

I think you'd find that in these East Asian neoliberal havens (for lack of a better term), people work quite a bit more than that. I think I can safely say that where I'm from, a 9-hour working day is easily the minimum for most people, in many cases not accounting for unpaid overtime work.

Including my own parents among those people and me once I graduate, you mean. yes indeed. 8 hours a day is a lax day here.

 

[aelf]

I guess that is the trend everywhere. We better work harder and longer lest profits dry up and everyone is screwed.

 

[Rashiminos]

They're in the right ballpark. They're just missing the anti-human aspect.

 

[Camikaze]

I don't think it's a simple policy adjustment, but I'm regrettably uninformed regarding the IMF and the World Bank specifically, and of global financial markets in general. I'm inclined to believe that the IMF and World Bank certainly could do more to alleviate the effect of their policies on those in poverty - but why would they? What's in it for their organizations? Just good PR? They don't really need good PR - they have horrible reputations as it stands, but these global financial organizations don't really need good reptuations as far as I can tell.

I think what's largely interesting with the idea that the organisations don't have a great need for PR regards where they get their power from. When we say "the IMF doesn't need to worry about PR", that's really an extension of "the states that make up the IMF". The US predominantly. The US and other states do have a greater need for good PR; a greater incentive to actually do things that are actually good for people. Shifting the focus onto the IMF seems to be at least to some extent an attempt to shift the responsibility and that would otherwise go with it. That doesn't really strike me as fundamentally fair; states shifting responsibilities by proxy so as to avoid the need for good PR.

 

[zjl56]

Considering that the IMF is in the business of making very risky loans, is there much the IMF can do on these regards without becoming insolvent?

 

[aelf]

The business of IMF is still business.

 

[amadeus]

The IMF is much more concerned with a country repaying its outstanding loans than anything else. This typically involves exploiting the natural resources and the local population instead of helping the country as a whole. This tends to exacerbate the problems instead of solving them.

Letting those countries steal money from abroad by not repaying their loans does not help them.

 

[Camikaze]

Considering that the IMF is in the business of making very risky loans, is there much the IMF can do on these regards without becoming insolvent?

Does making loans less dependent on austerity measures that appear to specifically target the poor make them riskier? I think it's really a matter of how they structure the conditionalities; shifting the target doesn't necessarily make the loans less viable, even if it would mean the conditionalities don't fit the liberal economic mould quite as much.