Argentina and the IFI's: Better off without them? Article by Alan Cibils. Intro: >There is a popular saying in Argentina: más vale estar solo que mal acompañado (better to be alone than in bad company). Increasingly Argentines are wondering whether it isn’t time to go it alone and leave the International Financial Institutions (IFIs, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank) behind. During his August 31st, 2004 ten-hour, self-invited visit to Argentina, IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato told President Néstor Kirchner: "At the IMF we have a problem called Argentina". Kirchner promptly replied: "I have a problem called 15 million poor people", a clear reference to what Kirchner considers the outcome of decades of mistaken IMF policy prescriptions in Argentina. This frigid exchange is an indicator that the relationship between Argentina and the IMF is not going smoothly. In fact, the three-year agreement with the Fund, signed in September of 2003, is in limbo. In what has become a regular event, the IMF delayed approval of the third quarterly review of the agreement due in July, alleging that Argentina had not complied with certain structural reforms.< Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
