• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | D63 image 2 | MR Online

So much lying from the International Monetary Fund: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2023)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted Apr 15, 2023)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on April 13, 2023 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Financialization, Imperialism, Inequality, StrategyAmericas, NicaraguaNewswireTricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Remarkably, during her visit to Ghana in late March 2023, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the US Treasury Department’s Office of Technical Assistance will ‘deploy a full-time resident advisor in 2023 to Accra to assist the Ministry of Finance in developing and executing medium- to long-term reforms needed to improve debt sustainability and support a competitive, dynamic government debt market’. Ghana certainly faces significant challenges in this arena, with its external debt standing at $36 billion and its debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio hovering over 100 percent. As Harris left Accra, Reuters reported that Ghana had hired the Bermuda-based financial advisor Lazard to represent it in talks with the Paris-based Rothschild & Co., which will represent the international bondholders that are the largest creditors of this cash-strapped nation. Rather than pressure these wealthy bondholders to cancel some of the debt (what is known as a ‘haircut’) or to extend a moratorium on debt servicing payments, the US government merely provided Ghana with a ‘technical advisor’.

In December, Ghana signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) through its Extended Credit Facility to receive $3 billion over three years. In return, Ghana’s government agreed to ‘a wide-ranging economic reform programme’ that includes a commitment to ‘increase domestic resource mobilisation and streamline expenditure’. In other words, Ghana’s government will conduct an austerity regime against its own people. At the time of this agreement, consumer inflation in the country had risen to 54.1 percent. By January 2023, it was clear that electricity, water, gas, and home prices had risen by 82.3 percent over the course of a year. The World Bank estimates that Ghana’s poverty rate is already 23.4 percent, which it projects will ‘increase slightly, due to the cumulative effects of increases in electricity and water tariffs, rising food prices, and an increase in [consumption taxes]’. Further cuts to public spending alongside the restructuring of domestic debt will mean despair for almost all of Ghana’s roughly 33 million people.

D63 image 6It is unlikely that the US government’s ‘full-time resident advisor’ on Ghana’s debt will offer either a factually based assessment of the escalating debt or proffer practical solutions to what has become a permanent debt crisis. It is already clear that there will be no focus on the wealthy Western bondholders such as the United Kingdom’s Abrdn and Amundi or the United States’ BlackRock, which hold a considerable portion of Ghana’s 13 billion dollars in Eurobond debt. It is far easier for the US to blame China, even though the country holds less than ten percent of Ghana’s external debt. That is perhaps the reason why Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo told Harris, ‘There may be an obsession in America about Chinese activities on the [African] continent, but there’s no such obsession here’.

The final section of our latest dossier, Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives, offers practical policy proposals for countries that are afflicted by permanent debt crises. Among them are suggestions to create progressive tax codes, reform domestic banking infrastructure, build alternative sources of funding to the IMF’s debt-austerity trap, and enhance regionalism. Given that the IMF and the World Bank punish any country that deviates from their orthodoxy, such policies would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Now, with the arrival of alternative sources of financing for development (from China, certainly, but also from other locomotives of the Global South), space has been opened up for the poorer nations to build their own national and regional projects that are grounded in genuine, and sovereign, development theories. As we write in the dossier, ‘These projects must seize multiple opportunities to raise funds, and the fragility of IMF power must also be utilised to advance fiscal and monetary policies that are built on an agenda committed to solving the problems of the African people, not facilitating the demands of wealthy bondholders and the Western states that back them’.

D63 image 1The principles that ground our dossier emerged out of a statement written by the Collective on African Political Economy (CAPE) entitled The IMF Is Never the Answer, which is published in the dossier. Among other key reflections, this statement points out that there is a need for a ‘new kind of institutional apparatus that fosters cooperation rather than competition’, which includes ‘establishing currency arrangements that bypass the US dollar’. Why is de-dollarisation such an important point? US Senator Marco Rubio provided clear insight to this question: ‘We won’t have to talk about sanctions in five years because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them’. Reliance upon the dollar not only allows the US to sanction countries; it is also ‘a strong lever of IMF conditionality’, as the CAPE statement notes. The statement also indicates the importance of the ‘urgent need to restore and reinvigorate the capacity and autonomy of the African state to deliver on its development agenda’. This includes increasing the ability of states to mobilise tax revenues and use these funds to build the dignity of their populations. Any approach to development in our times that respects nations’ sovereignty must be focused on creating a new form of financing for development apparatuses as well as a new role for state institutions in this process.

If you are interested in getting involved with CAPE, do write to the collective’s coordinator, Grieve Chelwa, at [email protected].

D63 image 7At the mid-April World Bank meeting, Ajay Banga, a former executive from Citigroup and Mastercard, will be anointed as its president. He will be the fourteenth US citizen to hold this job and the fourteenth man since the bank’s first president was appointed in 1946. Banga has no experience in the world of development – prior to commercial banking, he was involved in launching the US fast-food franchises Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken in India. Meanwhile, the New Development Bank, also referred to as the BRICS Bank, has just elected its new president, Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil. Rousseff comes to the BRICS Bank with extensive experience in Brazil’s programme to eradicate absolute poverty. Unlike Banga, who will promote the religion of privatisation, Rousseff will bring her experience of working with robust state policies, such as the income transfer programme Bolsa Família (‘Family Grant’) and the social protections programme Brasil Sem Miséria (‘Brazil Without Extreme Poverty’). As we note in the dossier, the emergence of the BRICS Bank, alongside other institutions in the Global South, has already begun to put pressure on the IMF and World Bank on key issues such as the exhaustion of the neoliberal debt-austerity model and the need for new tools, including capital controls, for governments to increase the sovereignty of their states and the dignity of their populations.

D63 image 4Ten years ago, the Nigerian musician Seun Kuti released a song called ‘IMF’ in his album A Long Way to the Beginning. The song is a damning critique of IMF policy, and the video, directed by Jerome Bernard, develops that critique through the personage of an African businessman being bribed and, ultimately, turned into a zombie. When King Midas touched objects, they turned into gold. When the IMF touches people, they turn into zombies. The art in our dossier is based on images from Seun’s music video, some of which are reproduced in this newsletter. The song is hypnotic:

So much lying from the IMF
People power

So much stealing from the IMF
People power

So much killing from the IMF
People power

Manipulation from the IMF
People power

Intimidation from the IMF
People power

So much suffering from the IMF
People power

Warmly

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Tricontinental Newsletter
Starbucks ‘workers and consumers have the same foe’
If the U.S. can’t boss the World, it will spitefully destroy it
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 16, 2025
    • Vietnam celebrates 50 years of the end of its colonial period by Vijay Prashad May 15, 2025
    • They are making Venezuela’s economy scream: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 02, 2025
    • Two hundred years ago, France strangled the Haitian Revolution with an inhumane debt: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 28, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
      Sam-Kee Cheng  | A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory smoking a cigar The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS dollar imperialism | MR Online

      1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

    Lost & Found

    • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
      Robert W. McChesney  | Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism | MR Online

      Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

    Trending

    • Wood gavel and open handcuffs symbolizing freeing judge decisions
      High Court opens door to police accountability
    • President Maduro was unscathed from the attack (Hugoshi)
      ‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid
    • Boat house on Cameron Island on Lake Joseph in Muskoka
      The supply and demand myth of housing
    • South African President Cyril Ramaphosa / French President Emmanuel Macron
      The Colonial past haunts French Military operations in Africa
    • This series of photos was shared on the official Instagram account of the U.S. government-operated Voice of America - Africa radio network on Feb. 15, 2025, with the caption: "White South Africans gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Pretoria...to show their support for U.S. President Donald Trump after he criticized what he terms 'unjust' treatment of White South Africans." | Photos via @voaafrica on Instagram
      Afrikaner ‘refugee’ arrival is latest tactic in Trump’s South Africa destabilization campaign
    • Floyd
      People get ready: Protest on the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder
    • Aerial view of Santa Rita strip copper mine near Silver City, NM
      Donald Trump’s feverish lust for green energy resources
    • Secretary Marco Rubio departs Instanbul, Türkiye May 16, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)
      Under Trump, NED to continue weaponizing “democracy” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba
    • Dahlia Abdelilah Baasher (Sudan), Untitled, n.d.
      A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025)
    • Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) speaking as President Trump listens. [AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee]
      Republicans move forward with plan to cut an estimated $715 billion in Medicaid funding

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Langley/Burkina Faso
      The U.S./EU/NATO’s Regime change playbook for Burkina Faso and Captain Ibrahim Traoré
    • Cpt. Ibrahim Traoré
      The rising star of Cpt. Ibrahim Traore – Burkina Faso’s spirit of Sankara
    • Tump and Putin
      Russia rejects Trump’s freeze of the war in Ukraine
    • Trump's Tariffs: Economic Warfare or Winning Strategy?
      The Trump Tariffs and the U.S. Labor Movement
    • Why does the US support Israel?
      Why does the U.S. support Israel? A geopolitical analysis with economist Michael Hudson
    • Wood gavel and open handcuffs symbolizing freeing judge decisions
      High Court opens door to police accountability
    • BAP demonstration in Washington DC gathered outside the Embassy of Burkina Faso, in defense of the Alliance for Sahel States, October 2024.
      Now is the time for all anti-imperialists and all justice loving people to stand unequivocally in defense of Burkina Faso
    • Karl Marx
      Marx’s ontology: A clarification
    • Karl Marx
      150 years since the Critique of the Gotha Programme
    • President Maduro was unscathed from the attack (Hugoshi)
      ‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid

    RSS MR Press News

    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) May 19, 2025
    • LISTEN: Erald Kolasi on the podcast ‘Real Progressives’ (The Physics of Capitalism) May 19, 2025
    • On the brilliant Bob McChesney April 21, 2025
    • Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project April 20, 2025
    • NEW! ROSES FOR GRAMSCI by Andy Merrifield (EXCERPT) April 7, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2025 May 19, 2025
    • Humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor May 8, 2025
    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2025 April 10, 2025
    • Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World April 2, 2025
    • Will Mpox be the next global threat to human health? April 2, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • May 2025 (Volume 77, Number 1) May 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime May 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • Neoliberalism and Neofascism May 1, 2025 Robert W. McChesney
    • Decolonization and Its Discontents May 1, 2025 Pranay Somayajula
    • China’s “Triple Revolution Theory” and Marxist Analysis May 1, 2025 Cheng Enfu

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555