IMF breaks rank with the free market agenda, Whse Star June 3, 2016

A highly unusual defector document from free trade religion with the title Neoliberalism: Oversold? was released by three of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’S) senior figures. http://goo.gl/KUhMHz

This break is significant after decades of media and academic lockdown during which economic critiques on incoherent elitism was verboten or pigeonholed as loony.

The explosive news item hit the wire during the last days of May, conveying a sense of urgency as it is dated June 2016. It appears to be part of a wider historical adjustment process that asserts itself in many ways.

Neoliberalism equals colonialism disguised behind market talk.

The IMF paper is not worded quite as succinctly as my own teardown. 

No matter; it is a purely face-saving moderation at this point.

American journalist and financial analyst Yves Smith commented: “In some ways, the fact that this article was written at all, and that it is apparently fomenting debate in policy circles, is more important than the details of its argument.”

It just got harder for the political, education and media mainstream, in Yukon as everywhere else, to continue to eradicate from the dictionary the mention and meaning of neoliberal decay.

Bad news also for the future of carbon-boosting derivative speculation, better known as carbon (tax/trade) pricing, and undemocratic deals like TPP.

Free trade is not about trade, but to shift legislative powers to multinationals.

Without naming the actual web of so-called free trade agreements, their toxic provisions enforcing economic warfare against people are in detail rejected in the IMF paper.

Never before were shots taken at Milton Friedman, the late free trade guru, by an international financial regulator.

Astounding for the conservatively-poised IMF is the choice of its Chile example and thread to lead criticism and rethinking.

First sentence: “Milton Friedman in 1982 hailed [Pinochet’s fascist] Chile as an ‘economic miracle’. Nearly a decade earlier, Chile had turned to politics that have since been widely emulated across the globe.”

Likely, this release happened with the consent and even initiative of IMF head Christine Lagarde.

Until its continued criticism of namely the German and French governments’ bankster profiteering in the Greece crisis, the IMF had been a cheer leader.

Stanley Fischer, formerly of the IMF now with the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, is quoted:

“What useful purpose is served by short-term international capital flows?”

Finance figureheads are suave diplomats of the highest order when admitting they were wrong, and one has to be able to carve out the subtext with precision.

What Fisher is really saying to me sounds a little more straightforward: Inflated currency and derivative speculation siphons off productive investments and disrupts growth of honest businesses.

The very last sentence in the document hits free traders and other neoliberal enforcers hard:

“Policy makers, and institutions like the IMF that advise them [countries], must be guided not by faith, but by evidence of what has worked.”

Evidence-based thinking was kind of my point in the Star column I wrote “Climate survival equals renewable industry growth”, but gladly shared.

Altogether not bad for the muggles from the IMF that they offer a breath of fresh air following 40 years of mental deep freeze and free market mantra singing. 

It is appropriate, since they had ushered in unprecedented protectionism with subsidies for price-fixing cartels like Big Oil.

In the meantime, false populist Donald Trump vultures are feeding on the rage of IMF’s victims of busted labour rights spiralling out of control into Dickensian poverty.

The lost ground and consequences of the IMF’s, World Bank’s, Fraser Institute’s, Clinton’s and Chretien’s actions are with us here today.

On the other end of the spectrum, Fort McMurray’s Iron & Earth oil sands workers, retraining to renewable energy, have beaten the IMF to the punch in sending a signal to restore wealth and growth.

The 500 strong and growing Iron & Earth membership knows that rebuilding economic strength, from the rustbelt in central Canada to the oil patch in the West, comes from installing and manufacturing of a renewable energy infrastructure.

They are getting ready – and are ready.