Ron Paul vs. the I.M.F.

"We are buying nothing but evil and global oppression by sending your taxdollars to the IMF," says the congressman — International Bailout Brings Us Closer to Economic Collapse. He calls "outrageous... the $108 billion loan guarantee to the International Monetary Fund" which "will allow that destructive organization to continue spending taxpayer money to prop up corrupt leaders and promote harmful economic policies overseas." He elaborates:

Not only does sending American taxpayer money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help. Along with IMF loans comes IMF required policy changes, called Structural Adjustment Programs, which amount to forced Keynesianism. This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that has brought our own country to its knees, and IMF loans act as the Trojan Horse to inflict it on others. Perhaps most troubling is the fact that leaders in recipient nations tend to become more concerned with the wishes of international elites than the wishes and needs of their own people. Argentina and Kenya are just two examples of countries that followed IMF mandates right off a cliff. The IMF frequently recommends currency devaluation to poorer nations, which has wiped out the already impoverished over and over. There is also a long list of brutal dictators the IMF happily supported and propped up with loans that left their oppressed populace in staggering amounts of debt with no economic progress to show for it.

I've written before about my personal experiences twelve years ago with "that destructive organization" — I Survived the IMF. "For years, in my ignorance, I bristled at the Korean use of term 'IMF Crisis' to describe these times," I wrote, "fooled as I was into believing that the IMF was the savior from, not the instigator of, the financial turmoil of 1997. It was not until I discovered Austrian Economics and stopped drinking from the poisoned well of Keynesianism that I began to see the light."

[link via The Shotgun Blog]