Subversion, IMF style:

...and elsewhere hold in such high regard...

...STEVE ELLNER (Steve Ellner is an associate professor in the department of economics at the Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela...

...Some of the IMF's recommendations are more a reflection of the conservative thinking of private banks than part of a strategy for repaying loans...

...Hollings was smooth...

...These differences in viewpoint raise the question of whether the IMF acts to safeguard its own investments only or those of the commercial banks as well...

...Jesse Jackson won the charisma award hands down...

...Thus the fund's proposals could set off conflict on many different fronts, and not just a few street riots as occurred in Brazil...

...In this sense the IMF either consciously or unwittingly represents the interests of the private sector in spite of the fund's public character and its theoretical commitment to the well-being of its constituent nations...

...The IMF's policies -- if accepted by recently elected Venezuelan President Jaime Lusinchi -- will provoke a popular outcry...

...marines were sent overseas to collect debts, have the state and the private sector been so inseparably identified...

...One reason was that the question period was briefer than planned, and managed rather than open...

...John Glenn won the celebrity cup, attracting a trail of adoring groupies and most of the portable TV cameras and microphones...

...And why should the IMF act as a front for the commercial banks, and thus become a whipping boy of nationalist sentiment south of the border...

...McGovern, characteristically candid...

...Lusinchi, thanks to labor backing, won by an unexpectedly large percentage of votes which means that popular expectations are high...

...Steel announced it was canceling plans to build a new rail mill at South Works in South Chicago on December 27, the company placed the blame on labor costs...

...Everyone came away with something...

...Dan Rostenkowski, Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, got front-page headlines when he charged that the company had reneged on a "firm commitment" to build the mill...

...The one Democratic candidate whose presence might have provided a point of dissent, former Governor Reubin O. Askew, of Florida, was elsewhere...

...JOHN DEEDY (John Deedy, former managing editor of Commonweal, writes from a converted barn on Cape Ann...

...Still, if the debate produced no clear-cut winner, the evening did...

...The case of Venezuela -- more than those of its heavily indebted Latin American neighbors -- demonstrates the importance of receiving the IMF's "seal of approval" and how, in practice, the fund acts as a virtual agent of the private banks...

...steel &investments LESSON IN LOYALTY CHICAGOANS lfiEEL BETRAYED W HEN U.S...

...With his big lead over the others for the Democratic nomination, for him it is now a game of playing one's cards safely...

...D ETRACTORS OF the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claim that the stringent conditions it imposes on thirdworld borrowing nations force their poor and middleclass populations to make sacrifices so that their governments can meet obligations to foreign private banks...

...It may be asked, for instance, why the IMF does not question Venezuela's acquisition of the costly F-16 bombers which will allow the nation's air force to boast of having the most sophisticated planes anywhere in the continent (see "F-16s for Caracas" in Commonweal, March 26, 1982...

...Venezuela's sound position should allow it to obtain the relatively modest loans it is soliciting from the IMF practically with no strings attached...

...The resultant " seal of approval" will serve as a green light for the four-hundred-and-fifty-odd commercial banks which are rescheduling the nation's foreign debt...

...Given the hour, said Hart to laughter, it would probably be Lee, meaning his wife...

...Steel came to Congress seeking tax relief...

...This opposition is in itself nothing new to the IMF which throughout its history has frequently triggered sharp controversies in third-world nations...

...At that point," the congressman recounts, [the Commonweal: 106...

...Such a measure, however, would be unnecessary if an income tax reform -- as advocated by the nation's main middle-of-thetoad labor confederations -- were implemented in which loopholes were tightened up and the virtually untaxed upperincome groups forced to pay a greater share...

...Hart won the good-humor prize for his wit in handling a rather silly question about whom he would consult if a crisis came up at one o'clock in the morning...

...While other nations desperately negotiate with the IMF for short-term loans to provide them with precious breathing space, Venezuela's main interest 24 February 1984:105 -1 t#f k j "Any chance of cab fare back to our hotel ?" ..it ~t @ is the IMF's "seal of approval" which will help it come to terms with its private creditors...

...He had it from the minute he entered the hall and bounded up the stairs throwing kisses to the applause...

...The IMF's defenders respond that the fund's recommendations are aimed at guaranteeing its own loans which represent an appreciable percentage of all international lending...

...While IMF policies run the risk of undermining the transition to democracy in Brazil and Argentina, it would be particularly unforgivable if they destabilize Venezuela, South Amrica's only well-established democracy...

...As with previous debates between the candidates, there was no clear winner of the gender-gap debate, probably because the evening developed as more of a love feast than a debate...

...Not since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, when U.S...

...It was women and the women' s movement as a force in American politics...

...Nevertheless, the IMF has submitted Venezuela to lengthy negotiations in order to reach a formal agreement regarding the nation's future economic policies...

...Venezuela's uniqueness lies in its relative economic stability which is underpinned by an exceptionally high per capita revenue derived from oil exports...

...In full-page ads in Chicago's daily newspaper, the giant conglomerate regretfully told how union refusal to change non-competitive work rules killed what was to have been America's most advanced facility for manufacturing rails But Chicagoans didn't buy it...

...The wealthy classes are not the only vested interests which are exempt from making sacrifices in the IMF strategy...

...That commitment went back to 1981, Rostenkowski explained, when U.S...

...Thus, for instance, the fund has called on Venezuela to implement a sales tax which conservafives in the U.S...

...U.S...

...Thus Venezuela's experience in solving its debt problems is similar to what other nations will be passing through once they begin to achieve economic recovery...

...Such strife in the case of Venezuela, however, has particular relevance...

...So of course there was no clear loser either...

...As Boston Globe columnist Robert Turner observed, it does not necessarily follow that presidential politics in 1984 is going to develop as some kind of latter-day Thurberesque battle of the sexes, but it does mean that women are being talked to and listened to in ways that are very new...

...Steel's move was greeted by angry denunciations from a solid phalanx of public officials...

...Would he turn around to a man or a woman...

...IMF recommendations for Venezuela come down hard on diverse sectors of the population which have direct input into the nation's highly participativ.e democratic institutions...

...This "seal of approval" facilitates (and in some cases is a sine qua non for) renegotiation with the commercial banks...

...Chase Manhattan and its ilk would become convenient targets of nationalist feeling should they, rather than the IMF, make such unpopular recommendations as elimination of the government' s milk subsidy and the freezing of salaries for public employees...

...Of course, the private banks themselves could draw up and impose their own set of conditions, but they would not be as morally binding as those of a public institution like the IMF...

...leasing provisions in ! 981 and 1982 gave the company "tons of money...

...The rescheduling of its debt will enable Venezuela to make its required payments to the private banks on time, something that Brazil and Argentina cannot hope to accomplish at the present...

...As agile and graceful as a Sugar Ray Leonard, he seemed ready to shadow box in other ihan the figurative sense...

...Report from Venezuela SUBVERSION, IMF-STYLE WHY LET IT BE A FRONT FOR THE BANKS...

...Another was that the panel of questioners --- Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe, Eileen Shanahan of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Carole Simpson of ABC News -- chose not to press the subject...

...The recent public airing of the United States contribution to the IMF must now be complemented by a thorough examination of the policies that the fund is advocating and the interests which they represent...

...Do the United States and the other advanced Western nations which control the IMF really want to identify themselves with IMF policies that threaten to galvanize soi:ial tensions...

...The IMF's plans for economic recovery coincide with what the banks themselves would put forward if given the opportunity...

...The tie-in between the IMF and the private banks is apparent in the conditions that it attaches to emergency loans which, when granted, represent a tacit endorsement of the nation's economic policies...

...The Emmanuel forum clinches that point, while at the same time establishing a bigger challenge: getting Ronald Reagan to debate gender-gap issues between now and November 6. The odds on that are not good...

...The candidates-appeared before the panelists in sets of threes, and Shanahan did ask Jackson, Hollings, and Mondale for their positions on sex education, including contraceptive information, and public funding for abortion...

...Mondale, arch and maybe a mite cautious...