articles for presentation

Articles for presentation:

1. The IMF is hurting poor countries:
I found this article on the guardian.co.uk website. It was written by Mark Weisbrot and published on Wednesday 13 May 2009.
The article talkes about the issue that many developing countries face when they try to borrow money from the IMF. The IMF usually places loan conditionalities on the borrowing country which can be seen as requirement that the country has to fullfil in order to receive the disbursement.A recent example is Latvia which missed a 200 million Euro disbursement, because it could not reduce its budget deficit to 5% of its GDP for this year as required by the IMF. The country is not desperately trying to meet the goals set by the IMF by closing public hospitals and schools, however this attempt prompts street protests.In Washington, politicians are planning to equip the IMF with an 108 bn appropriation in order to help developing countries.

2. The bank the world needs
I also found this article on the guardian.co.uk website. It was written by Nancy Birdsell and published on Thursday 3 May 2007.
The article talks about the fact that the World Bank right now is not able to address and tackle global issues, because it lacks the mandate and the financial instruments. Therefore, the member governments have to sit together in order to rethink the role of the bank and make it a strong and effective institution that the world needs. The article states that the global economy does not need a new institution, because the World Bank has great potential. It has two key strengths. The first one is its solid expertise which is highly valued by many countries and secondly its ability to provide global public goods. Therefore, it is up to the member countries to make effective use of the World Bank.

3. Collateral Damage
I found this article on the nytimes.com site. The article appeared in the editorial and was published on 19 October 2008.
The article focuses on the third world countries which have also become victims of the financial crisis. However, this is not the countries fault as their domestic economies are heavily dependent on rich countries’ economies which means that an economic slowdown in the world’s richest countries has considerable effect on developing countries as well. That’s why the rich countries should be prepared to provide rescue money to poorer countries that did not actually cause the crisis, yet have been hit hard as well.