Could Congress Block Antiworker IMF “Bailouts” in Europe?
Republicans in Congress are trying to block the U.S. Treasury Department from supporting U.S. tax funded International Monetary Fund contributions to the so-called “bailouts” in Europe, which, as economist Mark Weisbrot explains, aren’t bailouts for working families at all – for working families, the IMF programs guarantee extreme hardship, and most Europeans would be much better off if these IMF packages collapse – but bailouts of European banks with bad loans. The purpose of the IMF packages is to force European working families to pay off the banks’ bad loans through economic austerity, rather than forcing the banks to take their losses on their bad bets, which would be capitalism, or at least the capitalism they lecture us about it in school and on the nation’s op-ed pages when the politically weak are on the chopping block. As we know from the recent Latin American experience, if a country like Greece defaulted on the bad debt and got it over with, economic growth could resume. Bu
