[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Re: [Peace] AWARE ON THE AIR...

[Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

[Marv Gandall] Below, a link to probing article from the economist Michael Hudson on the $17 billion IMF loan to Ukraine as an instrument of US/EU policy. The loan is eight times the normal IMF quota, the first ever to a warring side in a civil war, and in violation of an IMF statute prohibiting loans to countries whose ability to repay is doubtful. 

Hudson claims the loan has had a dual purpose: (1) to temporarily prop up the collapsing Ukrainian hryvnia, allowing the country’s oligarchs to convert their holdings to euros and dollars before the currency plunged further and (2) to support the military buildup and assault against the Russian-speaking eastern regions. Little or nothing is slated to be directed towards reconstruction of the east’s shattered infrastructure and flattened homes, schools, hospitals, and factories. 

The only conceivable way Ukraine will be able to repay the loan will be to sell off its gas reserves and farmland to Western interests, but Russia has a strong legal claim on the amount for gas arrears and future deliveries as winter nears. US and British politicians and policymakers are trying to devise ways to declare Ukraine’s prior obligations to Russia as “odious debt” but, as Hudson notes, the precedent could render vulnerable their own intergovernmental loans, typically extended for military or political purposes. 

Hudson is a former Wall Street analyst who now teaches at the University of Missouri in St. Louis.

http://michael-hudson.com/2014/09/losing-credibility-the-imfs-new-cold-war-loan-to-ukraine/


On Sep 10, 2014, at 6:21 PM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> ...What I am concerned about, as well as most Americans I know, is that OUR tax money is being used to prop-up and support repressive governments like (but not only) Columbia, Egypt and Israel. When that tax money is desperately needed here in the U.S.. and / or could be used to finance REAL humanitarian needs around the world.
> 
> David Johnson
>