Tuesday, January 08, 2002
THE US, IMF, WORLD BANK, etc.
These international financial institutions which were set up after the end of the second World War have changed their functions over the years, but in effect they are essentially the agency of the major transnationals and the great powers. So what's called the G7, the seven big states, and the big transnational corporations which are on the scale of states and the financial institutions and so on, they are trying to organize a certain kind of world. The agency for carrying out those plans to a significant extent, not totally, is the World Bank and the IMF.
Sure we should be worried of the kind of world that they are trying to create and hence about the institutions by which they are doing it. And also about something very crucial about the nature of all these institutions, they are basically unaccountable. In order to know about what the IMF is doing, even, you would have to dedicate an awful a lot of energy and effort to put into it. You have to be a specialist. For most people that's hopeless -- you can barely know about their existence, let alone what they are doing, even when it's public, which it often isn't. And they are making decisions which have an enormous impact on people. Well that itself is illegitimate. So any unaccountable exercise of power is in itself illegitimate. If you look further at what they are doing I think there is good reason to be concerned about it, but they are not acting on their own. They express what in fact is called in the literature the "Washington consensus", and it's the "Washington consensus" because it's forged in Washington, which is not only the home of the World Bank and the IMF for the most part, but also of the world's most powerful state and the representatives of the major sectors of corporate power which either congregate there or send their representatives there. It's not called the "Washington consensus" for no reason.
-- Noam Chomsky
These international financial institutions which were set up after the end of the second World War have changed their functions over the years, but in effect they are essentially the agency of the major transnationals and the great powers. So what's called the G7, the seven big states, and the big transnational corporations which are on the scale of states and the financial institutions and so on, they are trying to organize a certain kind of world. The agency for carrying out those plans to a significant extent, not totally, is the World Bank and the IMF.
Sure we should be worried of the kind of world that they are trying to create and hence about the institutions by which they are doing it. And also about something very crucial about the nature of all these institutions, they are basically unaccountable. In order to know about what the IMF is doing, even, you would have to dedicate an awful a lot of energy and effort to put into it. You have to be a specialist. For most people that's hopeless -- you can barely know about their existence, let alone what they are doing, even when it's public, which it often isn't. And they are making decisions which have an enormous impact on people. Well that itself is illegitimate. So any unaccountable exercise of power is in itself illegitimate. If you look further at what they are doing I think there is good reason to be concerned about it, but they are not acting on their own. They express what in fact is called in the literature the "Washington consensus", and it's the "Washington consensus" because it's forged in Washington, which is not only the home of the World Bank and the IMF for the most part, but also of the world's most powerful state and the representatives of the major sectors of corporate power which either congregate there or send their representatives there. It's not called the "Washington consensus" for no reason.
-- Noam Chomsky
themassesareasses© on blogger Tuesday, January 08, 2002 
