March 20, 2007 by thinking girl
in a couple weeks, I will be participating in a video conference with the head of the IMF. We’ve been asked to put together a list of questions for him to answer. I have a couple questions already, but I thought I would ask you:
What would YOU ask the head of the IMF if you had the chance?
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Jesus! How did you score that??? I’d ask him: with hindsight what it is and all, what he thinks would have happened if they had all approved Keynes’ International Clearing Union rather than the IMF on that fateful day back in Bretton Woods? Keynes had the foresight to predict exactly what the IMF would produce - extreme power and wealth of the few at the expense of the many. Or, in what ways is the IMF superior to the ICU on a worldwide economic basis?
I’ll try to think up some doozies tonight. Next week I’m showing my students “Life and Debt” (must-see if you haven’t yet). I’ll see if they can come up with any good questions, if Tuesday’s not too late. Out of the mouths of babes and all.
yeah I know, right? exciting! (it’s part of a class)
interesting question… once the conference goes off, I’ll post the questions I wrote, and talk about his answers (if he chooses to answer my questions). My classmates have also come up with some interesting stuff, so I’ll post about the whole thing.
sounds impressive & I don’t have a clue what I’d ask.
re: to the question about PETA videos. Yes I did watch a bunch of them & it had a lot to do with my decision to go (mostly) vegetarian. I decided i couldn’t eat any of that stuff that was raised by those corporation standards.
Which means no chicken, beef or pork.
So far I feel great.
L>T - yeah, I thought you might’ve been watching PETA videos! They are pretty heartbreaking. Some of their other methods I find very problem-ridden, like their use of naked women to get their point across, which only really objectifies women instead of animals, but I think their real strength lies in the videos they produce of animal abuse. They are so hard to watch, they make me cry every time.
The thing is, I can justify alot of things but not that. Growing up on a small farm you don’t think of animals as living their lives totally disrepected like they are when they are just McDonalds fodder. We ate them of course but they had lives first & value. You might not understand that but as children we realized they kept us alive & we enjoyed them when they were alive & loved some of them as pets.
The first thing that got me going on this, was traveling on the train a few years ago past the stockyards in Arizona. Trains go places no one else sees. First I smelled a horrible smell & I went into the observation car to see. No one else was up because the sun was just coming up. What I saw left an indelible impression, like when I 12 & read my first story about a child being abused to death. it hit me like that. One of those things never leave your mind. (I don’t have to describe it, you can watch a PETA video) I kinda tried to shove it out of my mind, until I watched a couple of PETA videos, myself.
Then my daughter was working for a large deli chain. . She was telling me one day about throwing out 13 whole cooked chickens. (They Throw food all the time & make sure no one takes it home by crushing it in a compactor before it goes to the trash) The waste of life just blew me away. Those poor chickens had lived & died in horrible conditions for nothing. Their lives had absolutly no worth to anyone. That’s why I can’t eat that stuff, anymore.
Sorry, I’ve made this so long. But, i’ve never written about it before.
L>T - sorry, I had replied to you earlier, but for some reason my comment didn’t make it! hmph, my spamulator eating my own comment on my own blog! the nerve!
Anyway - no I understand. It’s different to treat animals with respect, and then use them for subsistence, than what is going on with the large chains and whatnot. For me, this is a major, major reason why I don’t eat meat. I carry it a bit further, because I don’t see why humans should have higher value than animals such that we kill them for our sustenance - but I understand your position, and I don’t disagree with it, it’s just a bit different for me.
I can really relate to the waste thing. I really have a major moral problem with people wasting meat. those animals gave their lives for our meal, and their lives were full of suffering just so we can throw their little bodies in the garbage? When you think that those are their BODIES we are putting into the trash, it brings it home. At least have the respect to only buy and cook what you can eat - don’t throw their little bodies away. When you factor in the environmental impact of massive animal farming, it becomes even more problematic. (the environment is the other reason I stopped eating meat)
I’m glad you’re talking about this, it’s good I think. We need to shine more light on this cruelty. Among others, of course!
You don’t know me; I just stumbled across your blog. But I do have two suggestions:
1) What can be done to cure hyperinflation? Specifically, Zimbabwe’s inflation is 1700% (and rising). It seems like a hopeless situation — how could it be fixed (if the government there was amenable)?
2) Assuming the IMF supports free movement of capital (free trade), do they also support free movement of labor (i.e. immigration)? Is there a difference between the two?
Hope you enjoy the meeting.
thanks cf4 - good one about Zimbabwe, I know they have been kicked out of the IMF because they can’t repay their debts.
I’ll report on the meeting when it happens.
did you report on this video conference.
hmmm i like question 2 by cf4, you would think that since labour is a market in capitalism that if one argues for the removal of trade barriers then they aught to argue for the free movement of labour.
We seem to have made that connection in the EU.
no, I didn’t get around to reporting about the conference. it all happened so quickly! I will say that it was very interesting, and the gentleman we met with was very kind and accomodating and invited us all to come and visit the IMF in D.C. BTW, he praised Brazil to high heaven for their super sustainability and environmentalism.
the free movement of labour, somehow, sounds dangerous to me. call me suspicious, but it sounds like a recipe for exploitation of third-world workers. can you tell me more about how it works in the EU?
I can see how it could be a recipie for exploitation of third world workers, although, I would presume that free flow of labour would work under the principal of workers being protected by the labour laws of the host country (one would hope).
Basiclly in the E.U you have the right of residency and work in any E.U member state. (some might see this as a evidence of nation state soverignty in the EU being eroded and us moving towards a federal system like the States)
Obviously they are a wee bit less given towards treating labour the same from immigration outwith the E.U as im sure you could imagine!
But then again, thats entirely consistant with the E.U as a trading bloc immigration controls just another form of the E.Us protectionism.