Teach me about World Bank and IMF

I was reading about the world bank privatizing water delivery in poor countries.

Can anyone school me and what horrible things the World Bank and IMF have done?

Thanks

To answer your question in simple terms nothing. Don't ask the farmers in India. Water Privatization in India, brought to you by the World Bank
Perhaps is naive to ask the world bank to care about farmers trapped in a kind of life style consider alien to western thought. Is the world bank's responsability to listen to Hydrological experts that say there are no fresh water sources to be found any more in the country? Or should the responsability side on the GOP of each country to protect the water recourses?

do a youtube search for John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

[edit on 8-11-2007 by MFSerendipity]

The IMF:

The International Monetary Fund is one of three international organizations created at the "Bretton Woods" conference in 1944. (The other two were the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.) The original aim of the IMF was to oversee the international monetary system, and to step in to bolster countries that were facing temporary balance-of-payment problems. The idea was to prevent the kind of chain reaction that caused world currencies to collapse during the Depression. The Fund originally included 39 member nations, each contributing a certain share of the money.

Today, the IMF has 182 member nations and a staff of about 2600 in 110 countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. The Fund is administered by a 24-member executive board and chaired by Michel Camdessus of France. Over time, the IMF has come to play a much more active role than simply as a short-term donor to countries with a budget imbalance. Critics say the IMF operates mostly in the interest of global investors, and at the expense of workers in developing countries. Typically, the IMF requires countries that apply for loans to slash social spending, privatize state-owned industries, curtail workers' rights and emphasize production for export - all with the goal of enabling the country to pay off its debts.

IMF money comes from contributions paid by each member country. The U.S. is the biggest IMF contributor, and therefore, under the IMF's structure, has greater voting strength in IMF decisions than other countries.

Source
Its an older source (clinton era) but not much has changed.
Bolding mine

World Bank/IMF SAP's

The IMF/World Bank conditions -- "structural adjustment programs" -- force Southern countries to promote sweatshops, exports to rich countries, and high-return cash investment. The resulting increase in international commerce -- corporate globalization -- led to demands by corporations and investors for ways to lock in their privileges and protection against the perceived danger of governments seizing assets or imposing new regulations. The WTO was the answer to those demands, an institution whose secret tribunals can overrule national laws if they are found to violate the rights of corporations.

The World Bank is best known for financing big projects like dams, roads, and power plants, supposedly designed to assist in economic development, but which have often been associated with monumental environmental devastation and social dislocation. In recent years, about half of its lending has gone to programs indistinguishable from the IMF's: austerity plans that "reform" economic policies by suffocating the poor and inviting corporate exploitation.

Although the IMF finally got some of the criticism due it with the East Asian financial crisis (where it imposed austerity programs on South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand), the two institutions continue to be the chosen tools of the political and business elites for ruling the global economy, and run, to one degree or another, about 90 Southern countries' economies. These countries are forced to adopt policies even more committed to deregulation and withdrawal of government from insuring public welfare than those in the U.S. Considering how impoverished many of these countries were to start with, the effects of these policies have been predictably devastating.

Source
Bolding mine

I could go on and on but i dont think its necessary. If you want more information than the small tidbits ive provided, just google "IMF (and/or) World Bank Austerity" A good author (also found in my sig) is Michael Parenti, his website is here:Michael Parenti