2000
The IMF require Argentina to cut the government budget deficit from its current $5.3 billion to $4.1 billion the following year, 2001. At that point unemployment was running at 20% of the working population. They then upped the ante and demanded an elimination of the deficit. The IMF had some ideas of how this could be achieved. Cut the government's emergency employment program from $200 a month to $160 a month.
They also asked for an across the board 12 - 15% cut in salaries for civil servants and the cutting of pensions to the elderly by 13%. By December of 2001, middle class Argentineans sick of literally hunting the streets for garbage to eat, started burning down Buenos Aires. In January Argentina devalued the Peso wiping out the value of many common people's savings accounts. Dismayed that they can't rape that country further, James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, states,"Almost all major utilities have been privatized."
How do they control the unrest within the population? Let me see, an Argentinean bus driver, a thirty seven year old father of five, lost his job as a bus driver from a company that owed him 9 months pay. During a demonstration against this and other injustices perpetrated upon him and the population, the military police shot him dead with a bullet through the head.
In Tanzania with approximately 1.3 million people dying of AIDS, the World Bank and the IMF decided to require Tanzania to charge for what were previously free hospital appointments. They also ordered Tanzania to charge school fees for their previously free education system then expressed surprise when school enrolment dropped from 80% to 66%.The IMF and World Bank have been in charge of Tanzania's economy since 1985 during which time Tanzania's GDP dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, standards of literacy fell and the rate of abject poverty increased to envelop 51% of the population.When the IMF and World Bank took charge in 1985, Tanzania was a socialist nation. In June 2000 the World Bank reported arrogantly,
"One legacy of socialism is that most people continue to believe the State has a fundamental role in promoting development and providing social services."
There is rioting in Bolivia after the World Bank drastically increase the price of water. The World Bank claim this is necessary to provide for desperately needed repairs and expansion. This is poppycock, my own water supplier is Wessex Water, a privatized water company that was actually owned by Enron! Since privatization (England was the first country to privatize the public water supply), the quality dropped and the prices exploded.Almost all privatized water companies in Britain have consistently failed to meet government targets on leakages.