The Living Room

William Blake " Nebukadnezar II" Tate Gallery, London

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the once popular chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was taken off a plane  and arrested for the attack and attempted rape of a chambermaid in a hotel in New York.

This incidence left the political and media landscape stunned. Not only has Mr Strauss-Kahn been central to the difficult bailout discussions in Europe, he also was widely rumored to be the Socialist Party’s candidate to run for France’s presidency next year.

The IMF oversees the international monetary systems and monitors the financial and economic policies of it’s members. It provides loans to countries to help them establish macroeconomic stability, it is helping to balance currencies and kickstart economies.

The purpose of the IMF is to oversee the monetary system and by doing so, it is reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community. Financial aid provided by the IMF is usually bound to “structural adjustment programs”, to bring the country in line with the objectives of the market economy. The IMF advocates austerity programs to reduce budget deficits and economic targets as a condition to the loan. For weak economies, this is causing a challenge through induced budget restrictions, which undercuts the government’s ability to sustain infrastructure, like health, education and security. The IMF also spearheads privatisation of  vital national resources ( like postal services, public transportation or natural resources), which often times leads to high prices and disastrous services (think of the British railway system, for example).

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