Blog #3

 Kameron Schreffler

03/22/2022


The article "Finance, Information, and Power" by Susan Strange brought up the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and how communication influences the creation of these institutions. Although some people claim that these institutions build the International Economy, I think that these institutions do not help rebuild the International Economy and cause more harm than good. I believe today that the IMF and the World Bank Group negatively impact the world economy and should not still exist or be heavily reformed. 


Both the IMF and the World Bank were created to help the international economic system; these goals have changed as the World Bank's goal was to focus on poverty reduction through rebuilding infrastructure and projects and countries. The restructuring of these institutions promoted free-market capitalism. The IMF then shifted again after the 2008 financial crisis. These institutions changed from being focused on helping individual countries improve poverty to switching their focus on the International Economy. The world bank also restructured lending money to institutions to decrease poverty. These institutions also aim to increase economic growth. 


Some criticize these institutions' power imbalance of the leaders running these institutions and claim that "poor countries" do not have proper political representation. I agree with that claim, and it is a fact that developing countries are continually underrepresented in these institutions and are only controlled by world powers with a political agenda. These institutions reformed their voting, which shifted some capacity, but it is still far from fair and needs to be reformed far more. 


Another reason against the IMF and World Bank is that these institutions hurt human rights. These institutions force political ideas that align with their own on developing countries. In the past, these institutions have not supported things like labor unions. These infrastructure problems also cause much distress, as these projects cause people to lose their homes and force infrastructure that citizens may not support. 


The IMF and the World Bank also hurt the environment significantly. The growth that these institutions want to obtain globally is unsustainable for the environment. The World Bank continually invests in fossil fuels and funds many fossil fuel projects. The World Bank lacks proper environmental regulation that keeps Forrest and other parts of the environment intact. The extensive infrastructure that these institutions build also promotes environmentally unfriendly things. 


I believe that the IMF and the World Bank originally had good intentions, but through reforms and political leadership, they have become unfriendly to the environment, harmful against human rights, and have a power structure that favors world-leading countries. These reasons are why the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund do more harm than good and should be abolished or completely restructured. 


Comments

  1. Grant VoytovichMarch 29, 2022 at 5:33 PM

    I think that this was really well done. I think its important to note that International Organizations, like the IMF and World Bank, play really difficult roles in our society. They are the middle figure and are put in charge of challenging tasks. It is difficult to please everyone when in this role, especially when there's around 190 countries involved. Do you think there should be a replacement for the World Bank or IMF if they are abolished?

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  2. John WallaceMarch 30, 2022 at 2:30 PM

    This is really interesting, But I think that abolishing the IMF would be a near Herculean amount of effort. At the same time, large scale change is hard to come by in large supranational institutions, due to the substantial number of countries it has to abide by. This isn't really a problem with just the IMF, more a symptom of an international institution. Changes such as what you mentioned are largely incremental at best, which begs the question as who how we can reform the system in a way that benefits change.

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  3. CiaraMarch 30, 2022 at 8:04 PM

    I thought your post was very interesting and posed a solid argument regarding the importance of the World Bank and the IMF. I think we need to understand the purpose of them was for one thing, while the intentions now have completely changed. I think in our past they were needed for their original intent, to help the international economic system. Something so inclined to help out world economics, is doing so little for many countries. It seems as though they are only focused on dominant countries economically and overseeing many of the developing counties that need help. The developing countries need just as much of a say and definitely should not be overlooked by such strong institutions. I think many reforms would need to take place in order for them to stand as they once did, with positive intentions and actions.

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