Global Power Project: Bilderberg Group and the International Monetary Fund
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
3 February 2015
Originally posted at Occupy.com
This is the ninth installment in a series examining the activities and individuals behind the Bilderberg Group. Read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth parts in the series.
In previous installments, this series has examined the historical role played by Bilderberg meetings in influencing major institutions and policies across North America and Western Europe over the past half century; the role of the meetings in supporting the rise of corporate and financial-friendly politicians to high office; the representation of interests from among the global financial elite, and the promotion of technocracy (particularly in Europe) and the representation of key technocratic institutions and individuals from Europe’s finance ministries and central banks, who’ve played important roles in the management of Europe’s financial and debt crises between 2008 and 2014.
This installment continues with an examination of Bilderberg’s role in facilitating the advancement of transnational technocracy in the EU, bringing in some of the top technocrats from leading European and international organizations to meet in secret with finance ministers, central bankers, politicians, corporate executives, bankers and financiers. The role of finance ministers and central banks has been the focus of the previous two installments in this series. Now we look at the IMF, which, together with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC), functioned as the “Troika” tasked with managing the international response to the debt crisis, organizing the bailouts and imposing harsh austerity measures and structural reforms upon the nations and people of Europe.
The IMF: It’s Mostly Fiscal
In 1992, the Financial Times published a feature article by James Morgan, the chief economic correspondent of the BBC, in which he explained that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the Group of Seven nations (specifically their finance ministries and central banks) and the International Monetary Fund have come “to rule the world and create a new imperial age.” Morgan wrote that the “new global system” ruled by the G7, the IMF, World Bank and other international organizations “worked through a system of indirect rule that has involved the integration of leaders of developing countries into the network of the new ruling class.”
The IMF is designed to come to the “aid” of countries experiencing financial and monetary crises, to provide loans in return for the nations implementing austerity measures and key structural reforms, and to promote easy access for foreign investors (ie. banks and corporations) to buy up large portions of the local economy, enriching both domestic and foreign elites in the process.
Thus, a nation which gets a loan from the IMF must typically dismantle its social services, fire public sector workers, increase taxes, reduce benefits, cut education and health care, privatize state-owned assets and industries, devalue its currency, and dismantle labor protections and regulations, all of which plunges the population into poverty and allows for major global banks and corporations to seize the levers of the domestic economy and exploit the impoverished population as cheap labor.
The IMF was created near the end of World War II, tasked with managing the global “balance-of-payments” between nations: that is, maintaining the stability of global deficits and surpluses (the borrowing, lending and trading) between countries. However, as the post-War international monetary system collapsed in the early 1970s, the IMF needed to find a new focus. In the late 1970s, the New York Times noted that the “new mandate” of the IMF was “nothing less than rescuing the world monetary system – and with it, the world’s commercial banks.”
As the major Western commercial banks lent out vast sums of money to developing nations during the 1970s, they created immense liabilities (ie. risks) for themselves. As interest rates on debt began to rise, thanks to the actions of the Federal Reserve, heavily-indebted countries could no longer pay the interest on their loans to banks. As a result, they were thrust into financial and debt crises, in need of loans to pay down their debts and finance government spending. A key problem emerged, however, in that major commercial banks (who stopped funding developing nations) could not force them to implement the desired policies. What was needed was a united front of major banks, powerful industrial nations and international organizations.
Enter the IMF: controlled by the finance ministries of the majority of the world’s nations, with the U.S. Treasury holding veto power over all major decisions. The IMF was able to represent a globally united front on behalf of the interests of commercial banks. All funding from governments, international organizations and banks would be cut off to developing nations in crisis unless they implemented the policies and “reforms” demanded by the IMF. Once they signed a loan agreement and agreed to its conditions, the IMF would release funds, and other nations, institutions and banks would get the green light to continue funding as well.
The IMF’s loans, policy prescriptions and reforms that it imposes on other nations have the effect of ultimately bailing out Western banks. Countries are forced to impoverish their populations and open up their economies to foreign exploitation so that they can receive a loan from the IMF, which then allows the indebted nation to simply pay the interest on its debt to Western banks. As a result, the IMF loan adds to the overall national debt (which will have to be repaid down the line), and because the nation is in crisis, all of its new loans come with higher interest rates (since the country is deemed a high risk).
This has the effect of expanding a country’s overall debt and ensuring future financial and debt crises, forcing the country to continue in the death-spiral of seeking more loans (and imposing more austerity and reforms) to pay off the interest on larger debts. As a result, entire nations and regions are plunged into poverty and abusive forms of exploitation, with their political and economic systems largely controlled by international technocrats at the IMF and World Bank, mostly for the benefit of Western commercial banks and transnational corporations.
The IMF has amassed great power over the past few decades, and because its conditions and demands on nations primarily revolve around imposing austerity measures and “balancing budgets,” the IMF has earned the nickname “It’s Mostly Fiscal”. However, due to the effects of the fiscal policies demanded and imposed by the IMF, causing widespread poverty, increasing hunger, infant mortality, disease and inequality, many populations and leaders of indebted nations view the IMF as far more than “fiscal.” In fact, former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak once referred to the IMF as the “International Misery Fund,” a sentiment shared by many protesters in poor nations experiencing the effects of harsh austerity measures.
The IMF and Bilderberg
As one of the world’s most important and influential technocratic institutions, the IMF has a keen interest in the goings-on behind closed doors at annual Bilderberg meetings, just as the group’s participants have a keen interest in the leadership and policies of the IMF. In fact, it is largely an unofficial tradition that the managing director of the IMF is frequently chosen from among Bilderberg participants, or in the very least, attends the meetings following their appointment. In a 2011 article about that year’s Bilderberg meeting, I commented on the race to find a new managing director of the IMF, noting that only Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, had previously attended a Bilderberg meeting (in 2009), and therefore, she seemed a likely choice.
Lagarde began her career at a corporate law firm in the United States, becoming the first female chair in 1999. In 2004, at the request of the French Prime Minister, Lagarde joined the French government of President Jacques Chirac as a junior trade minister and began to rise through the ranks. When Nicolas Sarkozy became president in 2007, Lagarde took up the post of finance minister, a position that Sarkozy had also previously held. As Foreign Policy magazine explained, both Sarkozy and Lagarde had a similar vision for France: “free markets, less regulation, and globalization.” Together, they imposed various austerity measures and structural reforms in France, and due to Lagarde’s ideological allegiance to the American-brand of “market capitalism,” she was given the nickname, “The American.”
Throughout the financial crisis, and really from 2008 onwards, Lagarde was pivotal in brokering a major bailout deal between the G7 nations, working with her “close personal friend,” Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary (and former CEO of Goldman Sachs). Lagarde became a skilled operator at G7 and G20 meetings, and was a regular figure at World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings. As the [New York Times noted]( in late 2008, Christine Lagarde’s “biggest fans are business leaders and foreign finance officials who have seen her in action.”
In 2008, the Financial Times ranked Lagarde as the 7th best finance minister in Europe. In 2009, she was ranked as number one, with the Financial Times writing that she “has become a star among world financial policy-makers.” That same year, she was invited to the Bilderberg conference. The following year, Lagarde was ranked in third place, having “played an important role in the Eurozone debt crisis, helping overcome Franco-German differences on the bloc’s eventual rescue plans.”
In 2011, Christine Lagarde’s name was put forward as a possible replacement for then-IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The influential economist Kenneth Rogoff said that Lagarde was “enormously impressive, politically astute,” and was treated “like a rock star” at finance meetings all over the world. The New York Times noted that while Nicolas Sarkozy had a challenging relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Lagarde “nurtured a close personal relationship with Mrs. Merkel.”
Shortly after Lagarde officially began to campaign to become the head of the IMF, the German, British and Italian finance ministries endorsed her candidacy, with the main rival for the top spot being the governor of the central bank of Mexico, Agustin Carstens, who secured the backing of the Latin American nations as well as Canada and Australia. Lagarde then received the golden seal of approval when she was endorsed by the U.S. Treasury Department, the only veto power voter at the IMF. Then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner commented that Lagarde would “provide invaluable leadership for this indispensible institution at a critical time.” While she was campaigning, Lagarde also managed to secure the backing of China, after she met for lunch with the Chinese central bank governor and deputy prime minister.
German Chancellor Merkel commented that “there are very few other women in the stratosphere of global governance.” As the publication Der Spiegel wrote, “[Lagarde] knows ministers and national leaders throughout the world, and she is on a first-name basis with most of them.” German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble was described as “her most important partner” in the EU and “her anchor in Germany.”
Gillian Tett, writing in the Financial Times in December of 2011, noted that “never before has a woman held such a powerful position in global finance,” and much like Chancellor Merkel, Lagarde now “holds real power.” Throughout the course of the European debt crisis, she used that power. Leading one of the three major institutions of the Troika, Lagarde played a central role in the organization of bailouts and enforcement of austerity across the Eurozone. A former top technocratic official in the IMF wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times in 2013 in which he explained that the IMF, alongside the European Commission and the ECB, are together “the troika running the continent’s rescues,” which “means political meddling had been institutionalized.”
The actions of these institutions were so damaging to the economies and societies – and social stability – of many European countries that a formal investigation into the activities of the Troika was held in the European Parliament in late 2013 and early 2014. The final report, produced by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), concluded that the Troika’s structure and accountability resulted “in a lack of appropriate scrutiny and democratic accountability as a whole.” After all, the growth and empowerment of technocracy coincides with the undermining and decline of democracy.
Christine Lagarde, who has spent her career as a corporate lawyer and finance minister, has steered the IMF on its consistent path of functioning as a transnational technocratic institution concerned primarily with serving the interests of global financial markets. As such, her participation in Bilderberg meetings – in 2009, 2013 and 2014 – brings her into direct contact with her real constituency: the ruling oligarchy.