IMF Policies: A Paradox of Alleviating Poverty

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The International Monetary Fund’s “main goal is to ensure the stability of the international monetary and financial system. It helps resolve crises, and works with its member countries to promote growth and alleviate poverty” (Imforg, 2016). My research seems to point to the main failure of the IMF policies as pointing to the same issues faced by any bank – math vs. people. While its goals may be to help alleviate poverty, those same policies are what causes the patient to become sicker or possibly die from the cure. Economists attempt to apply the rigidity, demanding constraints, and unforgiving answers of mathematics to human nature.

This was summed up at the Brenton Woods conference by Walter Lippman, an American commentator, who said “…the language …show more content…

Nevertheless, the problem with the IMF is that they come to the table when the damage is already so far gone that they require such drastic cuts to everything, ensuring that the public cannot sustain its way of living, thereby turning on the government that is trying to fix the problem, who as a result, cuts back on the austerity measures. In Greece’s case, the IMF only added to the debt, each time failing to ignite the Greek economy and in this circumstance, exacerbated the situation. The lack of integrity in hiding their true debt, the Greek government didn’t help matters, as well as national pride of both the Greeks and the Germans, borrower and lender. This tragic saga with the dueling prides, caused the IMF to change its lending rules. “If private creditors are simply paid off with IMF money, there is less incentive for a country to pursue reforms needed to improve its debt profile” (Matthew heller, 2016). In other words, they learned a lesson: lending to a state that doesn’t have control over its currency isn’t always the best course of

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