CIA
Files
In
the newly
released archive of
13 million pages by CIA, we found another report
concerning the IMF and the imposed austerity on former Yugoslavia.
In
this report, dating back in 1986, under the title "Yugoslavia's
Anti-IMF Tactics", serious concerns expressed about the fact
that Yugoslavian leaders wanted to loosen the tight rope of austerity
around Yugoslavia imposed by the IMF cruel strategy, which had
changed just a year ago and monitored by the CIA, fearing that it
will bring political unrest to the debtor countries as already
being revealed in another document.
It
is characteristic that the report acknowledges that Belgrade felt
like being humiliated by the fact that the IMF and the United Kingdom
didn't let Yugoslavia to roll back interest rates against the new
tight rules imposed.
As
a consequence, the report reveals the US concern about the fact that
Yugoslavia might had walk away from the Western model of free market
and cruel austerity, toward the influence of the Soviet Union.
Another concern was that Yugoslavia could have become a leading
example of resistance against the IMF tyranny among the group of NAM
(Non-Aligned Movement) countries.
There
are plenty of similarities in today's debt-enslaved Greece under the
Troika of destruction (IMF/ECB/European Commission). Various
information shows that the West feared that Greece would attempt to
escape from the cruel policies imposed by the creditors, finding
alternative finance through Russia, China, or, BRICS. Such a
potentially successful attempt by Greece, might had become an example
for other countries to escape from the eurozone madhouse, away from
austerity and Berlin's sado-monetarim.
Some
characteristic parts of the report:
Belgrade
has charted an approach toward the IMF which may bring it into
conflict with Western lenders over rescheduling conditionality
beginning in Mid May. The Yugoslavs since late 1985 have been
planning to unilaterally soften some austerity measures [...]
however, most of the planning group appears confident that the West
will back down from a showdown rather than damage Belgrade, always
tough in rescheduling negotiations anyway, is likely to be downright
truculent this year. This might well thrust Yugoslavia into the
limelight as a banner carrier for third world debtors as the NAM
summit preparations begin.
Into
its fourth year of financial crisis and IMF supervized austerity,
Yugoslavia is anxious to restart its lagging economy in the hopes –
probably vain – that new growth will show a way out of its
seemingly hopeless financial fix. Lacking a consensus or commitment
on market-style reforms which they earlier promised to try, many
leaders are now willing to revert to artifices which led the boom in
the last decade – at the risk of deepening structural weaknesses
and feeding inflation.
In
December Belgrade tried to roll back interest rates without IMF
agreement. The plan failed – largely because the IMF and the United
Kingdom insisted the Yugoslavs adhere to commitments or be declared
in default of rescheduling agreements for 1985. Belgrade backed off
and added this humiliation to its other simmering resentments against
the IMF and the West.
Belgrade
thus is ready to go back to its old wasteful ways and to defy the
West when it protests. [...] The chances of an orchestrated campaign
against the IMF would increase during such transitional junctures in
Yugoslav politics.
The
Soviets may feel that their waiting game is paying dividends now that
the IMF and the West are becoming the scapegoats for Yugoslavia's
economic problems. A few Yugoslav leaders - angry at the West and
frustrated by the divisions within NAM – have begun to urge a swing
eastward. Serbia's new President-to-be Ivan Stambolic reportedly has
expressed the view that Yugoslavia's future lies more with the USSR
because it would somehow advance the Serbs' cause against Albanian
nationalists in Kosovo.
In
sum, we think that the Yugoslav leadership is becoming more
inclined than in the past to join or even lead the NAM [Non-Aligned
Movement] debtors in some new demands against the West's debt
strategy. And one side effect of such policy switch could be that
Belgrade would willy-nilly be aligned with Moscow's strategy to
an extent that we have not seen since Tito's last eastward “tilt”
after the October War in 1973.
Also,
another piece is particularly characteristic:
Since
backing down from its initial attempt to decrease interest rates
Belgrade has drafted new measures – probably to be promulgated in
May after the new government is in place – which will again roll
back interest rates and lessen the bite of austerity in other ways.
One new measure would “restructure” domestic debt, which in
fact would be a first step in erasing a largely worthless collection
of paper debt from loans long ago squandered. The IMF agrees that
this problem needs to be cleaned up as firms still use these
ficticious assets to secure new credit. But as Belgrade still has not
demonstrated that it can control local borrowing, the IMF rightly
fears a new borrowing binge would result.
The
outrageous contradiction here is quite evident. While the most
reasonable action for a government is indeed to clean up the
"worthless collection of paper debt" to re-start the
economy, something that even the IMF clearly acknowledged, a lame
excuse is provided in order to forbid the government take such an
action. The excuse is simply that "Belgrade still has not
demonstrated that it can control local borrowing". In other
words, the 'logic' provided by the Western neoliberal sadists was
that 'we will let the cancer continue eating your economy because we
assume that you are unable to clean it!'
The IMF is just an acronym for EXTORTION
ReplyDeletehttp://wsenmw.blogspot.com/2016/11/extortion-in-3-letters-is-imf.html