IFIs and Neoliberal Economic Development

Greeks responded by heavily voting “no” to further austerity. The Syriza government then did a remarkable about-face. Eight days later, Prime Minister Tsipras signed an agreement even more unfavorable that what had been demanded by the troika. More than half of Syriza’s central committee signed an opposition letter and most Syriza members were furious. This was ignored.

You cannot build a left when you trash the very basis of our beliefs. It came from a mix of blatant opportunism, genuine confusion, psychological distress, and postmodernist sophistry.

That this is a “you are there” document from a personalized standpoint does not at all mean that The Syriza Wave is anything other than a serious political analysis. The work could have been strengthened in two ways: one, a deeper discussion of the economic issues, including the ramifications of staying in (or exiting) the eurozone, and, two, a discussion of how virtually every euro of the troika loans are going to creditors and banks rather than to the Greek people, a topic barely mentioned in passing only once. These are topics that would have added to the narrative.

For the SDGs to succeed, finance and technology have to be transferred to developing countries and some international rules on trade and intellectual property have to be altered if they are found to be obstacles to the right to development.

whatever their degrees of interconnectedness, localities are always unique blends of the old and the new, the endemic and the foreign, power and powerlessness.

North Atlantic universals so defined are not merely descriptive or referential. They do not describe the world; they offer visions of the world. . . . They come to us loaded with aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities, religious and philosophical persuasions, cultural assumptions ranging from what it means to be a human being to the proper relationship between humans and the natural world, ideological choices ranging from the nature of the political to the possibilities of transformation

how could there have been a more perfect alignment of the stars than happened in 2008? That year saw a wave election that left Democrats in control of both houses of congress, a Democratic president elected on a platform of “Change” coming to power at a moment of economic crisis so profound that radical measures of some sort were unavoidable, and at a time when popular rage against the nation’s financial elites was so intense that most Americans would have supported almost anything. If it was not possible to enact any real progressive policies or legislation at such a moment, clearly, it would never be. Yet none were enacted.

He adds that projects that sideline the consent of local people often lead to confrontation and conflict, negating any potential benefits for the local communities.

Egypt’s problems stem from the weakness of the private sector and the "rent-seeking" of state officials. The solution is to open Egypt’s markets to the outside world, lift restrictions on investment in key sectors of the economy, liberalise ownership laws, end subsidies to the poor for food and other necessities and increase market competition.

The mechanisms of this conditionality are discussed further below, at this stage, it is simply important to note that there has been an unassailable link established between aid and the fulfillment of neoliberal reforms.

This policy shift, however, does not represent a turn away from the logic of neoliberalism. Rather, it actually serves to reinforce this logic, by tailoring institutions to the needs of the private sector and removing any ability of the state to intervene in the market.

There are two common elements to all the financial support offered to Egypt to date – an extension of loans (i.e. an increase in Egypt’s external debt) and promised investment in so-called public-private partnerships (PPPs).

his fundamental message has been repeatedly emphasised by US and European spokespeople over the last weeks: this was not a revolt against several decades of neoliberalism – but rather a movement against an intrusive state that had obstructed the pursuit of individual self-interest through the market.

The political demands heard on the streets of Egypt today – to reclaim wealth that was stolen from the people, offer state support and services to the poor, nationalise those industries that were privatised and place restrictions on foreign investment – can be either disregarded or portrayed as "anti-democratic".

Precisely because Egypt’s uprising was one in which the political and economic demands were inseparable and intertwined, this effort to recast the struggle as "pro-market" is, in a very real sense, directly aimed at undercutting and weakening the country’s ongoing mobilisations.

In the case of Egypt, the discourse of institutional reform has allowed neoliberal structural adjustment to be presented not just as a technocratic necessity – but as the actual fulfillment of the demands innervating the uprisings.

n other words, contrary to popular belief, more money actually flows from Egypt to Western lenders than vice versa. These figures demonstrate the striking reality of Egypt’s financial relationship with the global economy – Western loans act to extract wealth from Egypt’s poor and redistribute it to the richest banks in North America and Europe.

Of course, the decision to borrow this money and enter into this "debt trap" was not made by Egypt’s poor. The vast majority of this debt is public or publically guaranteed (around 85%), i.e. debt that was taken on by the Mubarak government with the open encouragement of the IFIs. Egypt’s ruling elite – centred around Mubarak and his closest coterie – profited handsomely from these transactions (estimated in the many billions).

It is actually a debt swap – a promise to reduce Egypt’s debt service by $1 billion, provided that money is used in a manner in which the US government approves. This debt swap confirms the relationship of power that is inherent to modern finance.

The US is able to use Egypt’s indebtedness as a means to compel the country to adopt the types of economic policies described above.

Unless these loans are refused and the existing debt repudiated, Egypt will find itself in a cul-de-sac from which there is little chance of escape. Foreign debt is not a neutral form of "aid" but an exploitative social relation established between financial institutions in the global North and countries in the global South.

OPIC’s mandate is to support US business investment in so-called emerging markets; it provides guarantees for loans (particularly in the case of large projects) or direct loans for projects that have a significant proportion of US business involvement and may face political risk.

In the case of Egypt, this is likely to take place primarily through the use of US government funds to establish public-private partnerships (PPPs). A PPP is a means of encouraging the outsourcing of previously state-run utilities and services to private companies. A private company provides a service through a contract with the government – typically, this may include activities such as running hospitals or schools, or building infrastructure such as highways or power plants.

OPIC’s intervention in Egypt has been explicitly tied to the promotion of PPPs. An OPIC press release, for example, that followed soon after Obama’s speech, noted that the $1 billion promised by the US government would be used “to identify Egyptian government owned enterprises investing in public-private partnerships in order to promote growth in mutually agreed-upon sectors of the Egyptian economy.”

Anyone who has any illusions about the goals of the EBRD’s investment in Egypt would do well to read carefully the EBRD 2010 Transition Report. The report presents a detailed assessment of the East European and ex-Soviet republics, measuring their progress on a detailed set of indicators. These indicators are highly revealing: (1) Private sector share of GDP; (2) Large-scale privatisation; (3) Small-scale privatisation; (4) Governance and enterprise restructuring; (5) Price liberalisation; (6) Trade and foreign exchange system; (7) Competition policy; (8) Banking reform and interest rate liberalisation; (9) Securities markets and non-bank financial institutions; (10) Overall infrastructure reform.[5] Only countries that score well on these indicators are eligible for EBRD loans. A research institute that tracks the activity of the EBRD, Bank Watch, noted in 2008 that a country cannot achieve top marks in the EBRD assessment without the implementation of PPPs in the water and road sectors.

Moreover, fully embracing the pro-market ideological discourse discussed above, the Egyptian government promised to relax control over foreign investments through committing “to overcoming the previous shortcomings of excessive government centralisation. In addition, we will build on existing initiatives to achieve a greater level of decentralisation, especially in terms of local planning and financial management”.

As the decades of the Egyptian experience of neoliberalism illustrate all too clearly, these measures will further deepen poverty, precarity and an erosion of living standards for the vast majority. Simultaneously, the financial inflows will help to strengthen and consolidate Egypt’s narrow business and military elites as the only layer of society that stands to gain from further liberalisation of the economy. The expansion of PPPs, for example, will provide enormous opportunities for the largest business groups in the country to take ownership stakes in major infrastructure projects and other privatised service provision. Alongside foreign investors, these groups will gain from the deregulation of labour markets, liberalisation of land and retail activities, and the potential access to export markets in the US and Europe.

These measures also have a regional impact. Their other main beneficiary will be the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman), which are playing a highly visible and complementary role alongside the IFIs. Saudi Arabia has pledged $4 billion to Egypt – exceeding the amounts promised by the US and EBRD.

As with the investments from Western states, these financial flows from the GCC are dependent upon the further liberalisation of Egypt’s economy, most likely through the mechanisms of PPPs. Indeed, Essam Sharaf, Egypt’s interim prime minister, and Samir Radwan, finance minister, have both travelled frequently to the GCC states over recent months with the aim of marketing PPP projects, particularly in water and waste water, roads, education, health care and energy.

In essence, the financial initiatives announced over recent weeks represent an attempt to bind social layers such as these – Egypt’s military and business elites, the ruling families and large conglomerates of the GCC, and so forth – ever more tightly to the Western states. The revolutionary process in Egypt represented an attack against these elements of the Arab world.

What we get is not an attack on the west so much as a powerful critique of the development path that Asia, and especially China, is taking and a healthy questioning of markets.

The west has blown its chance, they each suggest, by fatally abdicating responsibility to the free market and the bankers, but China and other Asian countries are being led by strong governments with both the power and the confidence to take the hard decisions to avoid the west's mistakes. It is this that gives both authors some optimism for the future – albeit for very different reasons.

So the state has to be ready to take decisions. I don’t want a proprietorial state, or an interventionist state, but I do want the state to have the capacity to regulate and that people know that the state can do this. People should know that the state is prepared to act, although as long as private enterprise acts, it won’t. But when it’s necessary in order to defend the interests of the people, the state must be ready. And this is how I conceive of the state: it mobilises, oversees, regulates. It does not get involved as a proprietor, but is equipped to carry out works.

Petrobras is going to be the strongest company in the pré-sal. It’s important to remember that oil now belongs to the country, to the state. It doesn’t belong to Petrobras, Petrobras must buy it.

There is no case in the world, not in Norway, in Saudi Arabia, nor anywhere, in which a country that has discovered oil leaves the regulatory model the same as it was before it was certain there was oil.

I, an inveterate socialist when I was a union leader, will be the president who took part in the biggest capitalisation issue that the world has ever known. It wasn’t Bill Gates, it wasn’t Soros, it wasn’t any big businessman, it was a metalworker. When people say that I have am lucky, I say: Yes, I really am. I think that God has had a hand in it...

We’ve set up a fund. This money must be used to resolve some of Brazil’s chronic problems, starting with poverty, education, science and technology, culture. We’ve got to take advantage of this money, and not let it go down the drain, with each mayor or each governor spending it however he wants. This money must be controlled, and my idea is that it should be controlled by society, so that we can invest it from Oiapoque [Brazil’s northernmost town] to Chuí [its southernmost] to improve the lives of the Brazilian people. We have a great opportunity, to create a big oil industry, a big shipbuilding industry, to ensure that Brazil definitively joins the list of rich countries. I think that in the coming years we can be the world’s fifth largest economy, and to achieve this we are investing a lot.

I can say to Brazilians and to foreigners that this is unthinkable. For all our shortcomings, we have very organised social movements in this country, we have a functioning Congress, a functioning judiciary and we have a woman who, should she be elected, would be committed to democracy no matter what.

Dilma is just as democratic as I am, just as socialist as I am and just as responsible as I am. Perhaps being a woman I think she can do more, because we need to empower women in politics.

I went to Israel recently and said in its parliament: the very UN that created the state of Israel is the same one that should create a Palestinian state, draw the boundaries and establish the laws. It doesn’t happen.

There’ve awarded around ten Nobel Peace Prizes for the cause of peace in Israel and the Middle East, and peace hasn’t happened. Those people should return their Nobel prizes, since there’s no peace.

He said: “No, that’s not what I wanted to say. I was trying to say that around 70m people were killed in the Second World War and only Jews have become the victims.” I said: OK, then say that. That’s different from saying that the Holocaust never happened. Then we got onto the nuclear topic, and he complained of Obama, he complained about Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Sarkozy. And I said: Have you already talked with any of them? “No.” I went to Pittsburgh: Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Obama had made harsh statements about Iran. I went and asked all of them: Have you talked to Ahmadinejad? “No.” Now, how can you outsource politics? Politics can’t be outsourced. Politics is one politician talking to another. When it comes to putting things down on paper, in come the lawyers and the diplomats, but decisions have to be taken eye to eye between two democratically elected people.

We have the world’s cleanest energy matrix, that most sequesters carbon, and I don’t know why the rich countries, who talk so much about climate change, do nothing to change anything. Why was it that in Copenhagen the US put forward a proposal to cut emissions by just 4%? Europe could have offered 30% and offered only 20%. And everyone is starting to talk of money, as if poor countries were beggars who, if they were to receive just a little aid in dollars, could reduce their growth. We don’t accept this. What’s at issue is the planet Earth, and we all live on it. We need to talk seriously.

The climate change, however, is only one of many threats imposed by the First World, including a growing trend called the ‘land-grab’ (Pagano, 2009).   A recent quote in the Washington Post clearly illustrates that trend, calling Ethiopia’s farmland the ‘hottest commodity in the market’ (cited in: gadaa.com, 2009).

Additionally, one needs to view the structure of financing in terms of measures of discipline. Discipline is exercised in the name of ‘development.’ Therefore, it is important to relate this analysis of education to reproductive and disciplinary apparatuses to see how subjectivities are controlled and managed and how education functions as a self-affirmative apparatus.

Education is not only being maintained as an ideological state apparatus, it has entered the military-industrial-complex, in which a triad between private corporate profit, state defense and militarization and a general regulation of ideology ensues.

There is a mass wave of protests worldwide against the reforms in education.

unless there is an understanding of capital’s role in this situation, and unless precisely this fact is determined, broken down and fought against, that the very protests themselves are an additional new frontier for capitalist appropriation.

The only way to truly accomplish radical change is to link different social struggles, which are all implicated in capital’s appropriation of every sphere of life”