Failure of the Fund

Q4 Social Sciences Harvard International Review Pub Date : 2001-06-22 DOI:10.7916/D82J6NP8
J. Stiglitz
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引用次数: 5

Abstract

Rethinking the IMF Response The world is just emerging from the Asian financial crisis, perhaps the most cat event to affect global capitalism since the Great Depression. While the United States emerged from this event unscathed--some might argue that it even benefited from the crisis as plummeting commodity prices reduced domestic inflationary pressures--many developing nations were not so lucky. Whereas the Great Depression induced a great deal of soul searching about capitalism's basic principles, the seemingly quick global recovery from the financial crisis and its limited effect on industrial countries have brought a more mixed response--self-congratulation on the part of some, renewed criticism of the impacts of globalization by others. In both instances, however, the global economic arrangements were clearly inadequate. The international financial institutions and arrangements established at the end of World War II to guard against another global economic depression are widely viewed as incapable of managing the modern global eco nomy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in particular, has failed to perform the tasks for which it was designed. Today, the institution requires serious reform to ensure a more stable global economic environment. Beggar Thy Self The IMF's philosophy has moved far away from its roots. In this past financial crisis, the IMF provided funds under the explicit condition that countries engage in more contractionary fiscal and monetary policies than they might desire. The money went not to finance more expansionary fiscal policies but, instead, to bail out creditors from the more industrialized countries. The beggar-thy-neighbor policies that were so widely condemned gave way to even worse "beggar-thy-self" policies, with disastrous effects both for the home country and for its neighbors. The downward spiral in the region accelerated as declines in domestic GDP led to cutbacks in imports, thereby reducing regional exports. The beggar-thy-neighbor policy at least had the intention of making the nation's own citizens better off. No such benefits resulted from the IMF's beggar-thy-self policies. A country was told to build up its foreign-currency reserves and improve its current-account balance; this meant that it either had to increase expor ts or decrease imports. But exports could not rise overnight--in fact, as the country's neighbors' incomes plummeted, the prospects for increasing exports were even bleaker. Thus imports had to be reduced without imposing tariffs and without further devaluation. There was only one way that imports could be reduced in these circumstances: by reducing the consumption and investments that relied on imports. The immiseration of those at home was thus inevitable. There is a further irony in the policies that the IMF pursued: while the IMF was created to promote global economic stability, some of its policies actually contributed to instability. There is now overwhelming support for the hypothesis that premature capital and financial market liberalization throughout the developing world, a central part of IMF reforms over the past two decades, was a central factor not only behind the most recent set of crises but also behind the instability that has characterized the global market over the past quarter century. The Indictments There is now widespread agreement that the IMF response to the Asian crisis was a failure. Although exchange rates stabilized, interest rates dropped, and the world eventually emerged intact from the crisis, none of this turnaround can be attributed to the IMF when we judge the success of its policies by whether the downturn was unnecessarily long or imposed unnecessarily high costs on workers. Of the four crisis countries in Asia, Indonesia remains in deep depression. The political turmoil there has proven a nearly insurmountable obstacle, but there is little doubt that the magnitude of the economic downturn contributed to the severity of the social and political unrest, that the turmoil was anticipated, and that IMF policies contributed to the magnitude of the economic downturn. …
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基金的失败
世界刚刚走出亚洲金融危机,这可能是自大萧条以来对全球资本主义影响最大的事件。尽管美国毫发无损——有些人可能会说,它甚至从这场危机中受益,因为大宗商品价格暴跌减轻了国内通胀压力——但许多发展中国家就没那么幸运了。尽管大萧条引发了对资本主义基本原则的大量反思,但全球经济从金融危机中看似迅速的复苏及其对工业国家的有限影响,却带来了更为复杂的反应——一些人沾沾自喜,另一些人则重新批评全球化的影响。然而,在这两种情况下,全球经济安排显然是不够的。在第二次世界大战结束时为防止另一次全球经济萧条而建立的国际金融机构和安排,被普遍认为无法管理现代全球经济。特别是国际货币基金组织(IMF),未能履行其设计的任务。今天,该机构需要进行认真的改革,以确保一个更加稳定的全球经济环境。国际货币基金组织的理念已经远离了它的根基。在过去的这场金融危机中,IMF提供资金的明确条件是,各国必须采取比自己希望的更为紧缩的财政和货币政策。这些资金没有用于实施更具扩张性的财政政策,而是用于救助工业化程度更高的国家的债权人。受到广泛谴责的以邻为壑政策,让位于更为恶劣的“以邻为壑”政策,给母国和邻国都带来了灾难性的影响。由于国内生产总值的下降导致进口减少,从而减少了该地区的出口,该地区的螺旋式下降加速了。以邻为壑的政策至少有让本国公民过得更好的意图。IMF的“以邻为壑”政策并没有带来这样的好处。一个国家被告知要建立其外汇储备并改善其经常账户余额;这意味着它要么必须增加出口,要么必须减少进口。但出口不可能在一夜之间增长——事实上,随着邻国收入大幅下降,增加出口的前景更加黯淡。因此,必须在不征收关税和不进一步贬值的情况下减少进口。在这种情况下,只有一种方法可以减少进口:减少依赖进口的消费和投资。因此,国内的贫困是不可避免的。在IMF推行的政策中,还有一个更具讽刺意味的地方:虽然IMF的创立是为了促进全球经济稳定,但它的一些政策实际上助长了不稳定。现在有一种假设得到了压倒性的支持,即整个发展中国家过早的资本和金融市场自由化,这是过去二十年来国际货币基金组织改革的核心部分,不仅是最近一系列危机背后的核心因素,也是过去四分之一世纪以来全球市场特征不稳定背后的核心因素。如今,人们普遍认为,IMF对亚洲金融危机的反应是失败的。尽管汇率企稳,利率下降,世界最终完好无损地摆脱了危机,但如果我们以经济低迷是否持续了不必要的长时间,或是否给工人带来了不必要的高成本来判断IMF政策的成功,那么这一切都不能归功于IMF。在亚洲四个危机国家中,印尼仍处于严重萧条之中。那里的政治动荡已被证明是一个几乎不可逾越的障碍,但毫无疑问,经济衰退的严重程度加剧了社会和政治动荡的严重程度,这种动荡是可以预料到的,而国际货币基金组织的政策加剧了经济衰退的严重程度。…
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Harvard International Review
Harvard International Review Social Sciences-Political Science and International Relations
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