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When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted “as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected“, the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public’s surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.

But why the surprise?

As the below transcript from a April 2012 interview given by Lagarde to the Wharton school at UPenn, none other than IMF president Lagarde herself admitted that for the IMF to “thrive”, the world has to “goes downhill“, and that the IMF “to be sustainable” it needs to be “very in touch with our client base.”

She added that “when the world goes well and we’ve had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn’t do so well both financially and otherwise”

It goes without saying that Lagarde’s sole prerogative as the managing director of the IMF is to make sure it “does well.”

She concluded by saying that “we need to be able to invent and reinvent ourselves in many ways.” One such client-facing “reinvention” just happened to be caught on tape.

Here is the key section:

Knowledge@Wharton: Of all the things that you do here, what are you most passionate about? What would you really like to make sure happens? It could be a small thing, it could be a large thing. What is it that really has your heart?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lagarde – Wants to Raise Retirement Age & Taxes

March 6, 2016

Lagarde – Wants to Raise Retirement Age & Taxes

Christine Lagarde remained at the IMF and one of three Troika members because she is a Socialist and on board with both raising retirement ages to cheat people out of what they planned and to raise taxes while closing all borders to the movement of capital. She is also pushing behind the curtain for the SDR to replace the dollar and then the IMF becomes the power behind a one-world currency without ever having to stand for election anywhere.

Lagarde if pitching as a priority the lifting of retirement ages to match her excuse, the increase in longevity gains. People have been taxed their whole lives and governments have squandered that money while making lavish promises. Now Lagarde was retained at the IMF because she can push the Socialist agenda which is robbing the average person while blaming the rich. She does not have to worry about elections so she can do as she likes. Then pension systems around the world world are collapsing not just due to demographics, but the stupidity of government management. Lagarde is looking to use the demographics as the excuse because government have been robbing the people all along while blaming the rich. Lagarde is looking to alter the pension systems by extending the “productive life” expectancy of individuals. Extending the retirement age will allow them to tax you longer in life while shortening your benefit period of retirement. If government was managed properly and honestly, there would be not such crisis had money actually been saved instead of spent.

Largard has been running around the world threatening all tax heavens that they would be blocked from the Swift System if they did not turnover all accounts. She even threaten the Vatican.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why did Lagarde Stay at the IMF? To Increase its Global Power.

February 23, 2016

Why did Lagarde Stay at the IMF? To Increase its Global Power.

Christine Lagarde Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund spoke at the IMF Arab Fiscal Forum: Fiscal Policy and Growth in Abu Dhabi on February 22, 2016. Her message was clear – forget downsizing government or reforming anything, just raise taxes. She opened the conference saying:

“This event is taking place at a pivotal moment not only for this region but for many other countries that have seen fiscal issues rise to the top of their policy agendas.

Or, to be more precise, it is taxation that has risen to the agenda in many countries. If you wonder why this issue has become so important, let me assure you that this is nothing new in the history of mankind!”

Lagarde is calling for international taxation. She has threatened every tax haven with being sanctioned and removed from the Swift System unless they give up everyone. She has done far more damage to the world economy than any previous director. We have anemic economic growth and rising tax enforcement depriving us of our free society and the free movement of people as well as capital. If you owe taxes, government simply revokes your passport precisely as passports began to prove you owed the state nothing and could travel. She concluded her address and called for global tax enforcement and raising taxes; not reforming government in the least. She said:

“Political economy…proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people…and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.”

My main message today is this: creating successful 21^st-century economies requires robust government revenues and an international tax system that works for everybody. These ingredients are essential for growth, fairness, and development.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The One Percent Rallies Behind IMF Director Christine LaGarde

December 21, 2015

The One Percent Rallies Behind IMF Director Christine LaGarde

Washington removed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the leading contender for the French presidency and as director of the IMF by framing him on phony charges of raping a New York hotel maid. The obviously false charge was proven to be totally fabricated and had to be dropped. In the meantime Strass-Kahn had been forced to resign from the IMF and to drop out of the French election. Washington regarded Strauss-Kahn as insufficiently compliant with Washington’s agendas and moved him aside.

Washington got its vassal, Hollande, elected President of France, and replaced Strauss-Kahn at the IMF with the “rhymes-with-witch” Christine LaGarde.

LaGarde serves only the One Percent. She overturned the decision by the IMF’s professional staff that the Greek debt had to be written down to a sum that the country could afford to service. Instead, LaGarde enabled the One Percent to loot the Greek nation and the Greek people, forcing many young Greek women into prostitution in order to have money for food.

As Stephen Lendman points out below, LaGarde’s crimes have caught up with her. When she was French finance minister she ruled against the interest of France in order to benefit the tycoon Bernard Tapie. Corrupt prosecutors tried to cover it up, but the French judicial system has ruled that she must stand trial. http://www.wsj.com/articles/imf-chief-lagarde-ordered-to-stand-trial-in-france-1450373023 Despite the judicial order that she stand trial, she has not had to resign as IMF director. The One Percent protects its own. The IMF’s executive board “continues to express its confidence in the Managing Director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties.”

No such expression of confidence was given to Strauss-Kahn when he was arrested on obviously false charges.

IMF Chief Lagarde to Stand Trial

by Stephen Lendman

Charges are unrelated to her greatest crimes – representing the US-controlled IMF and Western monied interests at the expense of beneficial social change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Global Economic Reset Has Begun

December 9, 2015

The Global Economic Reset Has Begun

In my last article, I outlined the deliberately engineered trend toward the forced “harmonization” of national economies and monetary policies, as well as the ultimate end goal of globalists: a single world currency system controlled by the International Monetary Fund and, by extension, global governance, which internationalists sometimes refer to in their more honest public moments as the “new world order.”

The schematic for the new world order, according to the admissions of the internationalists, cannot possibly include the continued existence of U.S. geopolitical and economic dominance. The plan, in fact, requires the destabilization and reformation of America into a shell of its former glory. The most important element of this plan demands the removal of the U.S. dollar as the de facto world reserve currency, a change that would devastate our current financial structure.

I outlined with undeniable evidence the reality that major governments, including the BRICS governments of the East, are fully on board with the globalist agenda. There is no way around it; the BRICS, including Russia and China, have openly called for a global monetary system centralized and dictated by the IMF using the SDR basket. This same plan was outlined decades ago in the Rothschild-owned magazine The Economist. We are witnessing that plan being implemented in front of our very eyes today.

For the past couple of years, the current head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has used the phrase “global economic reset” often in her speeches and interviews. There is some (deliberate) ambiguity to this notion, but after sitting through hours upon hours of her most boring and repetitive discussions in globalist think tanks such as the Council On Foreign Relations, the consistent message is pretty straightforward. If anyone can stand to listen to this woman’s carefully crafted prattle and well-vetted half-truths for more than five minutes, I suggest they watch this particular speech given in January at the CFR:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Right Price for Preserving Our Climate

November 30, 2015

The Right Price for Preserving Our Climate

WASHINGTON, DC – When world leaders convene in Paris this week for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, their task will be to reach a global agreement on curbing greenhouse-gas emissions. A successful outcome, demonstrating that countries can work together for the good of the planet, would send a powerful message of hope to the world – and to the people of Paris, who remain unbowed after the recent terrorist attacks.

Climate pledges will be made on the basis of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), or commitments to the reduction of emissions worldwide. I believe that the price of emissions should be at the center of these pledges.

Achieving a decline in greenhouse-gas emissions at the lowest possible cost requires a revolution in energy use and production. Gradual, predictable, and reliable increases in energy prices would provide strong incentives for consumers to reduce their energy bills. At the same time, the right carbon price would enable a smooth transition away from fossil fuels by encouraging investments in technological innovation.

That is why the International Monetary Fund’s staff have recommended a three-part strategy on carbon fuel: “price it right, tax it smart, and do it now.” Each component is essential.

First, setting the right price for fossil fuels means taking into account their true environmental costs. Prices should pass on to end users the full cost not only of production and acquisition, but also of the damage – including air pollution and climate change – caused by intensive reliance on fossil fuels. A fairer carbon price will drive energy savings and boost demand for cleaner fuels and “greener” investments.

Second, the necessary change in prices would be achieved by taxing energy, using tools that are both practical and efficient. The best option is to build a carbon charge into existing fuel taxes and apply similar charges to coal, natural gas, and other petroleum products.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IMF’s Lagarde Anoints Chinese Yuan. Will it Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

November 15, 2015

IMF’s Lagarde Anoints Chinese Yuan. Will it Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

IMF boss Christine Lagarde is gung-ho about it. IMF staff is too. The Executive Board will consider it on November 30 and in all likelihood approve it. It will take effect in October 2016. Then it’s a done deal: the Chinese yuan will be added to the IMF’s currency basket, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR). A step toward becoming a major global reserve currency.

IMF staff had determined that the yuan meets the requirements of being a “freely usable” currency, Lagarde said in a statement, so a currency that is “‘widely used’ for international transactions and ‘widely traded’ in the principal foreign exchange markets.”

China also overcame other hurdles the IMF had put before it, after numerous reforms to liberalize its currency and credit markets and offer more transparency. The IMF’s Executive Board has the final say, but Lagarde will chair the meeting. And the rubber stamps are lined up on the conference room table.

Some countries, including France and Britain, have already expressed support for the change. According to Reuters, a Treasury spokesperson said the US government has always backed the yuan’s inclusion if it met the IMF’s criteria, and would “review the IMF’s paper in that light.”

The yuan has arrived – at the elite club for the biggest currency warriors: the dollar, the yen, the euro, and the pound.

China has long sought to give its currency more global weight, both as payments currency and ultimately as reserve currency, given the enormous size of its economy. By being included in the SDR, the yuan moves a big step closer, becoming more palatable for central banks to add to their foreign exchange reserves.

Currency analysts peg central-bank demand for the yuan at over $500 billion, according to Reuters. But global foreign exchange reserves have been shrinking since last year, as this chart by NBF Economics and Strategy shows:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will the Chinese Yuan Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

November 14, 2015

Will the Chinese Yuan Now Demolish the “Dollar Hegemony?”

She said IMF staff had determined that the yuan meets the requirements of being a “freely usable” currency, “which is defined as being ‘widely used’ for international transactions and ‘widely traded’ in the principal foreign exchange markets.”

Some countries, including France and Britain, have already expressed support for the change. Reuters reported that a Treasury spokesperson said that the US government has always backed the yuan’s inclusion if it met the IMF’s criteria, and would “review the IMF’s paper in that light.”

The yuan has arrived – at the elite club of big sinners and currency warriors: the dollar, the yen, the euro, and the pound.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Federal Reserve: Illusion of Understanding, Illusion of Control

October 28, 2015

The Federal Reserve: Illusion of Understanding, Illusion of Control

The net result is nonsensical policies that fail to achieve their stated objectives.

We live in an era of illusion: the illusion of understanding, and the illusion of control.

Few institutions reflect these illusions better than the Federal Reserve, though the Pentagon, Congress, the Imperial Presidency, the sick-care cartel and the higher education cartel are certainly giving it a run for its money.

The foundation of the illusion of understanding is data–Big Data. That the Fed has no idea of how the real economy actually functions is painfully apparent. But the state’s vast flood of data, neatly organized into slop-troughs that suggest precision, creates a very compelling illusion of understanding: media shills go to absurd lengths to treat bogus or marginal data as the equivalent of the tablets brought down by Moses.

Sorry, Corporate Media: the unemployment rate and the official rate of inflation are not real. They are illusions rigged to lull the masses and enrapture the simulacrum experts living high on the hog in academia, NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and think-tanks.

Here is the reality, as expressed by IMF Chairwoman Christine Lagarde: what passes for precise data is a guesstimate at best, and a carefully executed distortion at worst.

The net result is nonsensical policies that fail to achieve their stated objectives. Even more tragicomic, the spokespeople tasked with presenting this failure to the Great Unwashed are forced to speak gobbledigook that borders on the psychotic if taken at face value.

For example, Janus Yellen must claim she is planning to raise interest rates while also proclaiming that she’s keeping rates at zero for the indefinite future. If a non-Elite person rambled on in this fashion, they would be tossed in jail as a 51-50 (involuntary psychiatric hold).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Meanwhile In Greece, Pension Funds Tap Emergency Loans

August 26, 2015

Meanwhile In Greece, Pension Funds Tap Emergency Loans

This has not been a great year to be a pensioner in Greece.

Over the course of the country’s fraught bailout talks, Greece’s pension system was frequently in the troika’s crosshairs. As for PM Alexis Tsipras, pension cuts were generally considered to be a so-called “red line” and intractable disagreements over pension reform quite frequently resulted in the total breakdown of negotiations.

Meanwhile, the increasingly untenable financial situation and acute liquidity squeeze very often meant that payments to pensioners were in doubt, even as Athens went out of its way to assure the public that whatever funds were left in Greece’s depleted coffers would go to public sector employees before they would go to EU creditors or to Christine Lagarde.

The situation reached it’s “heartbreaking” low point on July 1 when Greek banks that had been shuttered after the institution of capital controls opened for a few hours to ration payments to long lines of pensioners who were forced to effectively beg for €120.

In theory, the bailout agreement – while promising more austerity and more pressure on the bloated pension system – should at least guarantee that there will be money in the banks to make monthly payments, but that assumption now looks to be in doubt because as Kathimerini reports, both IKA and ETAA are tapping a contingency fund that guarantees social security programs for fear that the provisions of the bailout will not provide for sufficient enough savings to fund the remainder of this year’s payouts. Here’s the story:

Greece’s state insurance funds are resorting to external loans to cover their needs as fears grow that the measures of the third bailout will not be enough to cover the rest of 2015’s liquidity needs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Euro ministers give blessing to Greek bailout, wooing IMF on debt

August 15, 2015

Euro ministers give blessing to Greek bailout, wooing IMF on debt

Euro zone finance ministers have agreed to lend Greece up to 86 billion euros ($96 billion) after Greek lawmakers accepted their stiff conditions despite a revolt by supporters of leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

Assuming approval by the German and other parliaments, 13 billion euros should be in Athens next Thursday to pay pressing bills and a further 10 billion will be set aside at the European Stability Mechanism, earmarked to bolster Greek banks’ capital.

In all, euro zone governments will lend 26 billion euros in a first tranche of the bailout before reviewing Greece’s compliance with their conditions in October.

One remaining uncertainty – aside from Tsipras’ ability to deliver sweeping budget cuts and privatizations opposed by many of his own party – is the role of the International Monetary Fund. After backing two previous bailouts, the IMF renewed its call for the Europeans to grant Athens debt relief – a bone of contention between the Eurogroup and the Washington-based Fund.

Managing Director Christine Lagarde told the Eurogroup by telephone that she could not commit until the IMF board reviewed the situation in the autumn. Officials said the Fund needed more assurances and detail on Greek reforms, notably to pensions, and steps to persuade it that Greece’s debt burden was sustainable.

But after deadlock since January that ravaged the already weak Greek economy and ended in a dramatic U-turn a month ago by the anti-austerity leftist government to avert Athens’ expulsion from the euro, there was a cautious sense of optimism among ministers gathered in a Brussels deep in summer holiday languor.

“After six months of very difficult negotiations with lots of ups and downs, we finally have an agreement,” Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told reporters on Friday. His appointment by Tsipras six weeks ago in place of his abrasive predecessor has been hailed by counterparts as a mark of a new Greek “realism”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

July 26, 2015

Capitalism, Engineered Dependencies and the Eurozone

Greece

As fact and metaphor the ongoing crisis in Greece is the vanguard of broad social disintegration across the capitalist West. IMF Director Christine Lagarde is being put forward as the voice of reason calling for writing down Greece’s debt to manageable levels. But her actual public statements have paid deference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion, a slight variation on Barack Obama’s mortgage ‘rescue’ packages, that maturities be extended but that people be left with debts far greater than they can reasonably pay. As attractive as permanent debt servitude might appear to those demanding it, it is a form of economic extraction, a transfer of economic production from nominal borrowers to banks and bankers.

Current IMF tactics are being placed in a neo-Cold War frame with the U.S. trying to maintain European political stability on the side of the U.S. against Russia and China. But the broader tendency is toward collective suicide through imperialist revival economics, a global race to replicate Western consumption through increasingly ‘managed’ capitalism and through renewed competition for resources that led to the catastrophic wars of the twentieth century. The geopolitical frame understates the crudeness of the economic logic that gives banker / creditor ‘workouts’ the appearance of geopolitical machinations. The economic relations in play are ‘political,’ but they derive from economic ideology that preceded the Cold War by a half-century or more.

The practical problem with the neo-Cold War frame is that it takes the underlying economic relations as given when they are in fact causal. The euphemistically-called ‘trade’ agreements being pushed by the ‘developed’ West grant broad authority over civil governance to multi-national corporations, the point being that the ideology that drives corporate actions is economic, not ‘political’ in the Western liberal sense of the term.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In A World Of Artificial Liquidity – Cash Is King

July 4, 2015

In A World Of Artificial Liquidity – Cash Is King

And you’d better have some stashed out of the system

Global central banks are afraid. Before Greece tried to stand up to the Troika, they were merely worried. Now it’s clear that no matter what they tell themselves and the world about the necessity or even righteousness of their monetary policies, liquidity can still disappear in an instant. Or at least, that’s what they should be thinking.

The Federal Reserve and US government led policy of injecting liquidity into the US and then into the worldwide financial system has resulted in the issuance of trillions of dollars of debt, recycling it through the largest private banks, and driving rates to 0% — or below. The combined book of debt that the Fed and European Central Bank (ECB) hold is $7 trillion. None of that has gone remotely into fixing the real global economy. Nor have the banks that have ben aided by this cheap money increased lending to the real economy. Instead, they have hoarded their bounty of cash. It’s not so much whether this game can continue for the near future on an international scale. It can. It is. The bigger problem is that central banks have no plan B in the event of a massive liquidity event.

Some central bank entity leaders have admitted this. IMF chief, Christine Lagarde for instance, warned Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen that potential US rate hikes implemented too soon, would incite greater systemic calamity. She’s not wrong. That’s what we’ve come to: a financial system reliant on external stimulus to survive.

These “emergency” measures were supposed to have healed the problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 — the excessive leverage, the toxic assets wrapped in complex derivatives, the resultant credit and liquidity crunch that occurred when banks lost faith in each other. Meanwhile, the infusion of cheap money and liquidity into banks gave a select few of them more power over a greater pool of capital than ever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“No Deal”: Tsipras Says Creditors Did Not Accept Greek Proposal

June 24, 2015

“No Deal”: Tsipras Says Creditors Did Not Accept Greek Proposal

Who could have possibly foreseen that the IMF would throw up all over the Greek “proposal”… aside from this post here “Why The IMF Will Reject The Latest Greek Proposal In Just Two Numbers” yesterday afternoon of course. In any event, moments ago Bloomberg reported that just as we wrote here yesterday afternoon, there is no deal and that Greek PM Alexis Tsipras told his associates that creditors not accepting equivalent fiscal measures has never happened before, according to a Greek govt official, who asked not to be named in line with policy.

Creditors “not accepting parametric measures has never happened before. Neither in Ireland, nor in Portugal, nor anywhere. This strange stance can hide two scenarios; they either don’t want an agreement or serve specific interests in Greece,” the official cited Tsipras as saying.”

As a reminder, Tsipras is meeting Wednesday with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in an effort to reach a deal before Greece’s bailout expires and about 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in payments come due to the IMF on June 30.

Here is the man himself tweeting as much and confirming that the blame game continues:

The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before-neither in Ireland nor Portugal. #Greece (1/2)

6:32 AM – 24 Jun 2015

This odd stance seems to indicate that either there is no interest in an agreement or that special interests are being backed. #Greece (2/2)

6:32 AM – 24 Jun 2015

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IMF Violates IMF Rules, to Continue Ukraine Bailouts

June 21, 2015

IMF Violates IMF Rules, to Continue Ukraine Bailouts

The IMF, whose bailout operations are absorbed by the taxpayers in the member countries whenever a particular bailed-out nation defaults, announced on Friday, June 19th, that it will “continue to support Ukraine through its Lending-into-Arrears Policy even in the event that a negotiated agreement with creditors in line with the program cannot be reached in a timely manner.” Though this new “Lending-into-Arrears” policy violates two IMF rules, it was justified by the IMF’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde on the basis of the Ukrainian government’s “continued efforts to reach a collaborative agreement with all creditors.”

In other words: a statement by Ukraine’s government that it wants to reach an agreement with its private creditors is being used by the IMF as if it were an excuse to extend into the indefinite future the IMF’s continued taxpayer-guaranteed financing of (‘lending’ to) the Ukrainian government, despite the fact that the IMF is violating two of the IMF’s own most-basic rules restricting its lending-authority — these rules are lending-restrictions whose purpose was to reduce the riskiness of the IMF’s lending, and so to minimize the amount that the IMF will be taking from taxpayers to fund its losses:

1: The IMF does not lend to nations at war — but Ukraine continues being at war against its former Donbass region despite the Minsk II ceasefire agreement; ceasefire violations, especially by the Ukrainian side, continue regularly.

2: The IMF does not lend to nations that are likely to default — but every independent source categorizes Ukraine as being virtually certain to default, and the only actual question regarding Ukraine is: when? The IMF’s answer: we’ll keep lending, building Ukraine’s public debt even higher, until our aim is achieved, and then we won’t — and that’s when the default will occur — the default will happen when we decide it will happen. It will happen when we will stop lying and saying that it won’t happen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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