IMF Medicine for Latin American. Debt Killed the Patient

‘In 2005, former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, after paying off his country’s debt to the International Monetary Fund said, the IMF has “acted towards our country as a promoter and a vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain.” He was right.

The history of IMF involvement in Latin America can be traced back the 1980s, known as the lost decade, during which Latin America experienced its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; the common link among nations was their external indebtedness to the international private banking system.

In contrast to the great depression, during the 1980s, Latin America faced strong pressures to avoid prolonged defaults and was forced to adopt contractionary macroeconomic policies, much of it by the IMF.’

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