The IMF Festivities in Istanbul

[Joanne98]

The Annual Meetings of the Board of Governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), together with their associated festivities, are about to begin in Istanbul. The meetings are important for the world’s financiers because they’re debating how to re-divvy up the shares owned by each country in the IMF, which will lend hundreds of billions to selected Finance Ministers over the next few years. Third World Rich People (TWRP), who run 'poor countries,' are demanding that First World Rich People (FWRP), who run 'rich countries,' give them more shares. They want 7 percent of the IMF, 2 percent more than FWRP agreed to. Predictably, because the IMF is going to have a lot more (taxpayers’) money very soon, rich people are loading up to fight over it.

Bea Edwards's diary :: :: TWRP want more say over IMF lending because then they can pretend to borrow a pantload of money to help poor people in their own poor countries while they – the rich people in poor countries – steal the money instead.

FWRP want more say over IMF lending so they can force TWRP to agree to loans that will be more stealable by FW rich corporations owned, for the most part, by themselves: FWRP.

Excitement abounds. Just after 5 on a polluted Friday evening we arrive at the international airport and deplane. Those of us who represent ‘civil society’ are entitled to transport from the airport together with the official International MF-ers and World Bank delegates. We board an enormous bus for delivery to our respective hotels, and thus begins a tour of Istanbul’s five-star accommodations: the Hyatt, the Hilton, the Intercontinental. This takes more or less forever. Masses of Turks leaving work for the week hustle out of the way. For the most part, they seem unaware that, this weekend, they’re the center of the financial world. Many are eating as they walk along, and it’s kind of a mess.

Near Taksim Square, where many officials disembark at the Hilton, the street is teeming with limos and police actively being in the way. A long high fence that reads "Polis" prevents the riff-raff from importuning the Bankers during their briefly accessible moment between the airport shuttle and the hotel lobby. Then the rest of us are carted off to our lodgings. In the midst of the urban chaos, we hear the call to prayer. We are, of course, heathens and we ignore it.

In the morning, we pass through a number of security check points to enter the official venue. Men and women with beeping paddles swarm us when our belt buckles unexpectedly set off the alarms at the metal detectors. Several guards are standing sideways, baffled by the contents of a lady delegate's purse. They ask her loudly in mangled English "What is fruit-flavor spermicide?"

Dear God. Signs point the way to the Civil Society Forum, which, it appears, is in the basement five floors underground – one up from the parking garage.

Here, we’re carefully contained. There is no escape, but it doesn’t matter. All of us are tame. There are no demonstrations anymore and certainly none in Turkey. No giant puppets, no tacky signs and no depressing anarchists. Every once in awhile the World Bank or the IMF sends a bureaucrat down to entertain us with a Power Point presentation.

Upstairs, the battle over IMF shares rages on. Brazil, Russia, India and China (a.k.a. the BRICs) have become more obstreperous. They’re insisting on 7 percent. This is sending the rich white people from Europe into a ugly fit of contempt, and virtually everyone is royally pissed off. Just last week, the plan had been all worked out. The BRICs would get their 5 percent, thus re-establishing "the legitimacy and effectiveness of the IMF," according to a statement from the International Monetary and Financial Committee (I am quoting this verbatim, I swear).

Continued>>.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/4/789647/-The-IMF-Festivities-in-Istanbul

[thunder rising]

1. What is fruit-flavor spermicide? hooot! Very good explanation.