patches70 wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:patches70 wrote:
The WB, IMF, a banker, money changer, whatever, they are all middlemen. They produce nothing, they siphon off portions of actual wealth.
It's not conspiracy, it's just how the system is. How any system is when you are forced to inject a middleman into any process. If you can do without the middleman you are immensely better off. You have lower costs and you keep greater profits.
Okay. Say you want to get a loan for college. You need $40,000 over four years. Your family is poor, and you don't earn high income.
So, what do you do? You can borrow from the Evil Banker who charges a 10% interest rate. If your post-college future stream of income yields greater than 10% per year, then this exchange is mutually beneficial. No one has been exploited or made worse off.
So, you're wrong about loans themselves being exploitative and blah blah blah.
Whoa now, that's in no way illustrative of the terms of IMF loans. The IMF is on par with the local loan shark down the street.
If you have an issue with the IMF terms who decides the matter? An independent court branch? No.
If I have a problem meeting the terms of my school loan then I get sued. To be on par with the IMF then the judge in that case would have to be the people who gave me the loan in the first place. Which isn't the case in your example.
And as a condition of getting the loan was I obligated to follow the bank's menu on what to eat? Where to go? With whom to associate? With whom I could purchase goods or sell goods? No.
This isn't at all the case when the IMF comes to town, not by a long shot.
So if you are going to compare things, at least compare apples to apples, not apples to rocks.
Oh, okay, by "bankers, middlemen, and blah blah blah, and IMF," you only mean "the IMF." I'll try to predict your future positions next time I post.