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"The IMF is changing, and with it, there will be a sea change in the way the world economy is run," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Their role will dramatically shift. You're talking about monitoring fiscal stimulus, moving toward tighter regulations for financial institutions. You're talking about global economic management in a way we have never seen."
Bowing to a new economic world order, the IMF would grant fresh powers to the likes of China, India and Brazil. It would have vastly expanded authority to act as a global banker to governments rich and poor. And with more flexibility to effectively print its own money, it would have the ability to inject liquidity into global markets in a way once limited to major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve.
That image of a radically transformed IMF -- whose role in the global economy had turned largely advisory in recent years -- is now coming together through internal IMF documents, interviews and think-tank reports. Finance ministers from major nations will begin grappling with the formidable details of the IMF's makeover this weekend when they converge in Washington for the fund's biannual assembly.
The changes, broadly outlined by President Obama and other leaders of the Group of 20 nations in London earlier this month, could take months, even years to take shape. But the IMF is all but certain to take a central role in managing the world economy. As a result, Washington is poised to become the power center for global financial policy, much as the United Nations has long made New York the world center for diplomacy.
President Barack Obama Monday asked Congress to back an expansion of an IMF emergency fund by 500 billion dollars in a move designed to expand its reach to big emerging market nations.
President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a $100 billion U.S. loan to the International Monetary Fund to boost the IMF's resources and urged a bigger stake in the IMF for emerging powers.
In a letter to U.S. congressional leaders, Obama said the U.S. funding "does not represent a budgetary expenditure or any increase in the deficit since it effectively represents an exchange of assets."
Before we go on, let me say a word about Switzerland. Will President Barack Obama do something about this country? Switzerland can be described as a rogue territory. It thrives on earning an income from its banking industry. But its banking industry is one of life’s most Byzantine processes.
Swiss banking laws are more secretive than the operations of the world’s secret services. It took decades for the Philippine government to get Swiss authorities to move against the billions that its former dictator, Marcos, had stashed there. The Duvalier family has money in Switzerland that is still to be repatriated to poor Haiti that needs it. The Pakistani Government in the nineties did not succeed in persuading the Swiss to investigate the Swiss holdings of the late Benazir Bhuto and her husband, who is now President of Pakistan (Lord help that country with that man that is now in power). The private media in Russia continues to insist that Prime Minister Putin has dirty money in Switzerland. A leaked CIA report to the New York Times has supported the Russian media on this story.
"The current debacle is the result of multiple overreaching government regulations and interventions. At the very base of the problem is the Federal Reserve, which has attempted to fine-tune the economy and guide it delicately through ups and downs," Lewin writes
A new economic world order is emerging and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be at the center of global policymaking as a kind of mega-central bank which would "manage" all economies, according to a report in The Washington Post.
President Obama and other G-20 leaders recently empowered the IMF to inject liquidity into global markets in a way once limited to major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The radically transformed IMF — which was largely an advisory body in recent years — is now coming together through internal IMF documents, interviews, and think-tank reports.
The IMF is based in Washington, where it monitors the global economy, warns of impending crises, and offers financial and technical advice to the organization's 185 member nations.
Officials from IMF member countries gather in Washington next week to discuss the global recession and other economic issues.
China’s central bank renewed its call for a new global currency and said the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ foreign-exchange reserves, triggering a decline in the U.S. dollar.
“To avoid the inherent deficiencies of using sovereign currencies for reserves, there’s a need to create an international reserve currency that’s delinked from sovereign nations,” the People’s Bank of China said in its 2008 review released today. The IMF should expand the functions of its unit of account, Special Drawing Rights, the report said.
Group of 20
Group of 20 leaders on April 2 gave approval for the IMF to raise $250 billion by issuing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the artificial currency that the agency uses to settle accounts among its member nations. It also agreed to put another $500 billion into the IMF’s war chest. This month, Russia and Brazil announced plans to buy $20 billion IMF bonds, while China said it is considering purchasing $50 billion.
“Special drawing rights of the IMF should be given full play, and the international body should manage part of its members’ reserves,” the central bank report said.
IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky said on June 6 it’s possible to take the “revolutionary” step of making SDRs a reserve currency over time.
Originally posted by burntheships
reply to post by Solomons
Yes and this is it. A global economy run by a global bank...
In my humble opinion, this growing IMF role as the master mind bank...since it is based in Washinton D.C. the U.S. will still have plenty of influence...Only the plan is to break the U.S. and slave it's citizens.
The IMF is based in Washington, where it monitors the global economy, warns of impending crises, and offers financial and technical advice to the organization's 185 member nations.
Officials from IMF member countries gather in Washington next week to discuss the global recession and other economic issues.
www.voanews.com...
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, made a pitch for two other major Bilderberg goals: creating a global Department of Treasury and Department of Health, with all nations surrendering sovereignty over these issues to the UN. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to become the Treasury Department and the World Health Organization the World Health Department. But Bildt seized on an old Bilderberg issue, global warming, to make the case for WHO. Bilderberg propaganda over a “swine flu pandemic” has fallen victim to facts: On average, 300,000 Americans develop flu each year and 30,000 die. Only a few have died or even been seriously afflicted by “swine flu.”
The world economic meltdown is a “once-in-a-generation crisis while global warming is a “once-in-a-millennium challenge,” Bildt told Bilderberg. Sources inside Bilderberg said Bildt’s speech mirrored an address he gave to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. Carnegie’s president, Jessica Mathews, is a long-time Bilderberg participant.
“We are at a critical time,” Bildt (pictured) told Bilderberg. “The order of magnitude [of world crises] are more challenging than we are used to. The world economic recession has already reversed strong annual growth rates in many developing [poor] nations and in some parts of Europe and has the potential to bring down governments. . . . ”
“When we hit bottom, we can’t be sure where we’ll bounce back up,” Bildt said. “This is an urgent economic crisis unlike anything we have dealt with in living memory.” However, he called for a bounce-back within years, not a decade-long recession as some called for in efforts to exploit human misery.
Carl Bildt, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, made a pitch for two other major Bilderberg goals: creating a global Department of Treasury and Department of Health, with all nations surrendering sovereignty over these issues to the UN. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to become the Treasury Department and the World Health Organization the World Health Department. But Bildt seized on an old Bilderberg issue, global warming, to make the case for WHO. Bilderberg propaganda over a “swine flu pandemic” has fallen victim to facts: On average, 300,000 Americans develop flu each year and 30,000 die. Only a few have died or even been seriously afflicted by “swine flu.”
“We know we need to take action,” Bildt said of global warming. “The global crisis is now,” he said. “The necessity to take action on climate change is now.” His calls for “global action” on these supposed “crises” were thinly disguised calls for UN control.
Bildt called for world (UN) solutions to virtually all problems. He cited the European Union as “model of integration, saying, “the EU is emerging as a global actor.” He advocates expanding NAFTA throughout the Western Hemisphere to create an “American Union.”
The International Monetary Fund sent a report to Bilderberg advocating its rise to the role of World Treasury Department. “Further actions by policymakers, particularly in the financial sector, are needed to restore market trust and confidence,” said Marek Belka, director of the IMF’s European department and former prime minister of Poland.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner enthusiastically endorsed the plan for a World Treasury Department, although he received no assurance that he would become its leader. He expressed “hope” that American and European leaders could “work together” to achieve such a “global solution” to the world economic meltdown.
The IMF’s planned new role as a world Treasury Department should be welcome news to the “little guy,” Geithner told Bilderberg. “The damage has been unfair and indiscriminant,” he said. “Ordinary Americans, small business owners and community banks who did the right thing and played by the rules are suffering from the actions of those who took on too much risk.”
But, even with a World Treasury Department, problems will not disappear overnight, Geithner warned. “These are all welcoming signs, but the process of financial recovery and repair is going to take time,” he said, lending his weight to a relative short-term recession as opposed to those who backed a long-term recovery. The people of Europe and America will have suffered enough to embrace a World Treasury Department, he said.
“Our hope is that we can work with Europe on a global framework, a global infrastructure which has appropriate global oversight,” Geithner said. “We can’t allow institutions to cherry-pick among competing regulators and ship risk to where it faces the lowest standards and weakest constraints.”
Bush OKs 'integration' with European Union - Congress never asked about new obligation.
President Bush signed an agreement creating a "permanent body" that commits the U.S. to "deeper transatlantic economic integration," without ratification by the Senate as a treaty or passage by Congress as a law.
The "Transatlantic Economic Integration" between the U.S. and the European Union was signed April 30 at the White House by Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – the current president of the European Council – and European Commission President Jos? Manuel Barroso.
The document acknowledges "the transatlantic economy remains at the forefront of globalization," arguing that the U.S. and the European Union "seek to strengthen transatlantic economic integration."
7-year plan aligns U.S. Rules, regs to be integrated
Six U.S. senators and 49 House members are advisers for a group working toward a Transatlantic Common Market between the U.S. and the European Union by 2015.
A progress report on the TEC website indicates the following U.S. government agencies are already at work integrating and harmonizing administrative rules and regulations with their EU counterparts: The Office of Management and Budget, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bennett also confirmed that what has become known as the "Merkel initiative" would allow the Transatlantic Economic Council to integrate and harmonize administrative rules and regulations between the U.S. and the EU "in a very quiet way," without introducing a new free trade agreement to Congress.