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Guillaume Long, Mark Weisbrot, Francisco R. Rodríguez and Joe SammutGuillaume Long, Mark Weisbrot, Francisco R. Rodríguez y Joe Sammut / June 15, 2022 15 Junio 2022

No a las falsas soluciones: los sobrecargos del FMI deben desaparecer

Alexander Main and Michael GalantAlexander Main y Michael Galant / July 03, 2024 03 Julio 2024

A person stands holding a bright orange sign that reads "STOP IMF SURCHARGES" in bold black text. They look determined and wear a patterned scarf. The edge of a multicolored woven fabric is visible in the foreground. Other blurred figures are in the background.

Más de IMF

Más DEG para América Latina y el Caribe: una oportunidad en tiempos de múltiples crisis

Andrés Arauz and Francisco AmslerAndrés Arauz y Francisco Amsler / November 21, 2023 21 Noviembre 2023

Entrevista con Mark Weisbrot sobre las elecciones en Argentina

Mark WeisbrotMark Weisbrot / November 20, 2023 20 Noviembre 2023

CEPR examines how government policies affect growth, employment, prices, poverty and health in the world and US.

CEPR analiza cómo las políticas gubernamentales afectan el crecimiento, el empleo, los precios, la pobreza y la salud en el mundo y en EE. UU.

World United States El Mundo EE. UU.

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CEPR en las noticias

IMF Announces Partial Reform to Controversial Surcharge Policy

Green Central Banking / October 23, 2024

Should the Minimum Wage Be Lower for Workers Who Get Tipped? Two States Are Set To Decide

Associated Press / October 21, 2024

Entre fracasos, empiezan las reuniones del FMI y el BM

La Jornada / 21 Octubre 2024

El directorio del FMI se reúne y podría aliviar el peso de la deuda de Argentina

Perfil / 11 Octubre 2024

Latest

Lo último

• Op-Ed/Commentary MedicareMedicare AdvantageUnited States

Senate Report Shows How Medicare Advantage Giants Lie to Seniors and Deny Health Care

Uncover the deceitful practices of Medicare Advantage insurance giants. Learn how private insurers prioritize profits over senior health.

Brandon Novick / October 25, 2024

• Report COVID-19DebtHealthcareInequalityUnited StatesWorkers

Before and After the Pandemic: Income Volatility, Health Care Affordability, and Debt

Exploring the impact of income volatility: delve into the reasons behind fluctuating incomes and their consequences on households.

Julie Yixia Cai and Emma Curchin / October 23, 2024

• Op-Ed/Commentary IMFIMF SurchargesInternational

IMF Reforms Are Welcome, But Surcharges Still Must Go

Discover the harmful impact of IMF surcharges and the need for their complete elimination. Explore the reforms announced and their implications for developing countries.

Michael Galant / October 21, 2024

• Press Release IMFIMF GovernanceWorkers

14 Congress Members Urge IMF to End Harmful Conditions, Embrace Pro-Worker Agenda

Washington, DC — 14 members of Congress, led by Congresswoman Susan Wild (D-PA), sent a letter to International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urging the Fund to move away from its long history of harmful, anti-worker loan conditionality, and to instead enact an agenda that meets the needs of workers and low-income populations across the developing world.

“As the [IMF] starts to undertake the Review of Program Design and Conditionality,” the letter reads, “we urge you to ensure that IMF policy conditionality and program design supports governments in developing and enabling a macroeconomic environment to meet the Sustainable Development Goals and Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Climate Agreement.”

Rep. Susan Wild remarked: “Regressive economic policies hurt workers, their families, and their communities — whether they’re enacted here at home, or around the world. As a champion of working families and the labor movement across Pennsylvania’s Greater Lehigh Valley who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I understand that durably protecting workers in my community requires ensuring high standards for workers around the world.

That’s why I’m proud to lead this effort urging the International Monetary Fund to chart a new path. Instead of continuing its policy of attaching draconian conditions to its loans that lead to austerity and exacerbate inequality, the IMF has the opportunity to embrace an agenda that prioritizes the needs of working people and lower-income communities. As we approach the IMF’s Annual Meetings later this month, now is the time to begin advancing a new vision for the IMF—with a focus on critical goals like expanding health care and education and strengthening workers’ rights, decent work, and sustainability.”

The signatories outline six steps that the IMF should take toward an “agenda focused on the needs of workers and low-income populations”: (1) Including systematic ex-ante and ex-post distributional impact assessments for proposed conditionalities; (2) Avoiding pro-cyclical macroeconomic policies; (3) Designing programs that ensure that fiscal targets and non-social conditionalities support and bolster social spending; (4) Improving social spending floors to turn them into goals supporting countries’ development objectives, rather than ceilings; (5) Setting policy to ensure the IMF systematically considers the wages of public servants in social sectors; and (6) Considering the impact of proposed conditionalities on workers’ rights, decent work, and sustainability.

“The IMF’s long record of imposing draconian austerity, privatization, and deregulation conditions on its loans has been nothing short of disastrous for workers around the world,” said Alex Main, Director of International Policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). “Despite recent improvements in rhetoric, the fundamental austerity logic of IMF lending remains unchanged. For the wellbeing of working people everywhere — and to help get the global economy out of its current rut — the IMF must change its ways.”

The letter also calls on the Fund to release another allocation of international assets known as Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to provide immediate financial support to developing countries, noting that the last issuance of $650 billion of SDRs in 2021 amounted to more than all of the development assistance provided by advanced economies that year and “likely saved in the hundreds of thousands of lives,” at no cost to US taxpayers. SDRs support developing economies and, in so doing, help create more export sector jobs in the US.

“The upcoming review of Program Design and Conditionality Policy is an opportunity for IMF leadership to take a step towards making the Fund work for people and not at their expense,” said Charlotte Friar, Senior Policy Analyst for International Finance at Oxfam America. “It is about time that the IMF transforms itself to meet the ever-worsening inequality crisis ravaging Global South countries. The Managing Director has the chance to use her second term to make the IMF an institution that tackles inequality head on, instead of fueling it with more austerity.”

The letter’s signatories are: Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA); Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH, Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions); Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA); Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX); Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX); Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL); Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL); Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA); Rep. James McGovern (D-MA); Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC); Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN); Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL); Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL); and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

To see the full letter, click HERE.

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October 18, 2024

• Op-Ed/Commentary Health and Social ProgramsMedicare AdvantageUnited States

34 Million Seniors in Medicare Advantage Plans Face Rude Awakening

Medicare Advantage turmoil: insurers dropping plans, cutting benefits, and raising rates for beneficiaries. Find out more.

Emma Curchin / October 15, 2024

• Briefing/Testimony HealthcarePrivate Equity

Stop Wall Street Looting Act: More Necessary Now Than Ever

CEPR co-director Eileen Appelbaum has written a letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren explaining the dangers of private equity.

Eileen Appelbaum / October 11, 2024

• Op-Ed/Commentary EducationGun ViolenceUnited States

Gun Violence Lowers Academic Achievement Especially for Black Children

Examining the troubling increase in gun violence in schools and its detrimental impact on children. Discover the need for immediate action.

Algernon Austin / October 10, 2024

• Op-Ed/Commentary InequalityJobsUnited StatesWorkers

Latino Immigrants Do Many of the Most Dangerous Jobs

Discover the alarming truth about workplace fatalities among Latino workers and the steps needed to improve workplace safety.

Algernon Austin / October 10, 2024

• Press Release EcuadorLatin America and the CaribbeanUS Foreign Policy

US Visa Bans Against Ecuador’s Former President Correa and Family a “Transparently Political Attempt to Weaken” the Left Ahead of Elections

Designations Come Just Days After Correa Met with Julian Assange

Washington, DC — The US State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions against Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa, former vice president Jorge Glas, and members of their families are a “transparently political attempt to weaken” Correa’s political movement ahead of elections in February, CEPR Director of International Policy Alex Main said today. The US designations will prevent the political figures, their wives, and their children from entering the United States. They come as current president Daniel Noboa, who has warm relations with the US administration, faces declining popularity due to a persistent energy crisis that has led to prolonged nationwide blackouts.

“These designations are wholly unjustified and are clearly a political maneuver intended to damage the movement Correa founded ahead of next year’s elections,” Main said.

CEPR Senior Research Fellow and former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Guillaume Long added, “President Noboa’s presidential term has been marked by an ongoing security crisis, with organized crime becoming increasingly more pervasive and powerful in Ecuador, and by numerous controversies, including a widely condemned raid on Mexico’s embassy in Quito, numerous human rights violations by security forces and serious allegations of misconduct and political persecution by the country’s attorney general. In this context, the US government is once again putting its thumb on the scale to try to tip the balance to the right and prevent a progressive government from returning.”

Correa was convicted in 2020 of exerting “psychic influence” over office holders in a bribery case based largely on fabricated evidence. Interpol has refused on three occasions to issue a red notice against Correa, who was granted political asylum by Belgium in 2022, where he has resided since the end of his presidential term in 2017. Recently, evidence has emerged suggesting that the attorney general, Diana Salazar, has been politically motivated in her prosecution of Correa and former members of his government. Nevertheless, the US State Department has provided cover for Salazar, most notably by officially declaring her an “anti-corruption champion.”

The designations come four years after Correa’s conviction but just days after Correa met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who had been granted asylum by the Correa government and who lived for seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Correa was the first high-level politician outside of Australia to meet with Assange following his release from Belmarsh Prison in London in June.

“The timing of these designations, just after Correa met with Assange, could have a chilling effect and may be intended to discourage other officials from showing support for Assange and WikiLeaks,” Main said.

With the inclusion of Correa’s wife and children — who have never had any involvement in Ecuadorian politics — the designation appears to be of a brazenly arbitrary and vindictive character.

By contrast, the US government has not followed through on congressional requests to investigate Ecuador’s former right-wing president Guillermo Lasso, who chose to end his presidency rather than face impeachment over corruption allegations, who has associates linked to organized crime, and whose family is connected to a series of shell companies and more than 140 real estate properties in Florida worth tens of millions of dollars. Nor did US authorities target former president Lenín Moreno after an arrest warrant was issued against him in March 2023 on charges of corruption. The US government has also supported current president Noboa despite allegations of human rights violations and despite his orders in April to raid the Mexican embassy in Quito, in a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and forcibly arrest Glas, who had been granted political asylum.

“These visa restrictions are clearly mostly symbolic,” Long noted. “Correa hasn’t traveled to the US since 2016, and Glas is currently in one of Ecuador’s most notorious prisons. The US government is degrading the gravity and effectiveness of its visa restrictions with such transparently political and baseless designations. If it is to retain any credibility in its use of these restrictions to target allegedly corrupt foreign actors, it should immediately revoke them.”

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October 10, 2024

• Op-Ed/Commentary Climate ChangeIMF

The Global South’s Poor Should Not Be Subsidizing the IMF

Learn how the IMF is hindering nations' capacity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals through punitive fees.

Dan Beeton and Shereen Talaat / AL JAZEERA ENGLISH / October 08, 2024

• Comunicado de prensa EleccionesAmérica Latina y el CaribeVenezuelaEl Mundo

Estados Unidos debería apoyar los esfuerzos de Brasil, Colombia y México para encontrar una solución negociada al impasse electoral en Venezuela

Washington, DC — Un nuevo informe del Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) ofrece un análisis de las disputadas elecciones en Venezuela y esboza un camino a seguir para los actores internacionales, en particular Estados Unidos.

El informe recomienda que la administración Biden y otros actores internacionales apoyen los esfuerzos de Brasil, México y Colombia para llegar a un acuerdo negociado y permitan el avance de esfuerzos diplomáticos durante los cuatro meses previos a enero de 2025, cuando está previsto que comience el nuevo mandato presidencial en Venezuela. Los líderes de estos tres países cuentan con décadas de experiencia en el tratamiento de problemas análogos al actual conflicto en Venezuela, incluyendo conflictos electorales propios.

Desde las elecciones del 28 de julio, se han difundido dos series contradictorias de resultados: una del Consejo Nacional Electoral del país, según la cual el actual presidente, Nicolás Maduro, ganó por nueve puntos porcentuales; la otra, de la oposición venezolana, según la cual Edmundo González ganó por un margen de 37 puntos.

La oposición ha publicado miles de supuestas actas de escrutinio que parecen respaldar su afirmación; la autoridad electoral venezolana aún no ha publicado un desglose detallado de los resultados. Sin estos resultados detallados, es imposible verificar de forma independiente el anuncio de una victoria de Maduro por parte de las autoridades venezolanas.

Como señaló el CEPR antes de las elecciones, ni el gobierno ni la oposición aceptarían la victoria del otro, ya que ambas partes tenían razones válidas para cuestionar la imparcialidad de la votación. El informe señala que, aunque “se ha prestado mucha atención a los desafíos que la oposición venezolana ha enfrentado antes de las elecciones, ha habido poca discusión sobre el impacto de las amplias sanciones impuestas por Estados Unidos, y algunos de sus aliados europeos, y sobre cómo estas han hecho que sea prácticamente imposible tener una elección demócratica, o libre y justa en este momento”.

Las sanciones influyen en las elecciones por la destrucción masiva que han causado, estimada en mayor que el colapso económico padecido por Estados Unidos durante la Gran Depresión. También han causado al menos decenas de miles de muertos, lo que reduce claramente las posibilidades de reelección del presidente en funciones. Y lo que quizá sea aún más importante, millones de votantes venezolanos eran conscientes de que estas sanciones letales probablemente continuarían si reelegían el actual gobierno.

Aunque Estados Unidos ha mostrado cierto apoyo a la negociacion iniciada por estos países, su compromiso sigue siendo incierto, y podría cambiar tras la celebración de las elecciones estadounidenses. El informe muestra que los 25 años de intervención estadounidense en Venezuela, así como “[l]a historia de las dos últimas décadas de política exterior estadounidense en el hemisferio” harían que “cualquier observador racional desconfiara del papel potencial de Washington en un esfuerzo multilateral para resolver una crisis política, especialmente una en la que ya está profundamente comprometido a apoyar a un bando contra el otro”.

El informe señala que “volver a políticas anteriores fracasadas” no ayudará a resolver el conflicto y “ciertamente costará muchas vidas, y causará mucho más sufrimiento adicional”. Por todas estas y otras razones, el informe subraya que es especialmente importante apoyar los esfuerzos de Brasil, Colombia y México para contribuir a una solución negociada del conflicto. Los líderes de estos tres países “tienen décadas de experiencia lidiando con problemas análogos al actual conflicto en Venezuela, incluyendo desafíos electorales propios”. Estados Unidos debería apoyar los esfuerzos diplomáticos que se desarrollen en los cuatro meses que faltan hasta enero de 2025, cuando está previsto que comience el nuevo mandato presidencial en Venezuela.

August 22, 2024 22 Agosto 2024

• Informe EleccionesAmérica Latina y el CaribeVenezuelaEl Mundo

Las controvertidas elecciones en Venezuela y el camino por delante

Desentrañando la crisis electoral en Venezuela: resultados contradictorios, tensiones políticas y la respuesta internacional.

CEPRCEPR / August 12, 2024 12 Agosto 2024

• Artículo Fondo Monetario InternacionalSobrecargos del FMIEl Mundo

No a las falsas soluciones: los sobrecargos del FMI deben desaparecer

Alexander Main and Michael GalantAlexander Main y Michael Galant / July 03, 2024 03 Julio 2024

• Informe CoronavirusGlobalización y comercioOrganización Mundial del Comercio

¿Qué está en juego en la XIII Conferencia Ministerial de la OMC en Abu Dhabi este mes?

Lo que está en juego es una lucha entre dos visiones sobre el papel que debería desempeñar la OMC, como organismo normativo más poderoso del mundo en la economía global.

Deborah JamesDeborah James / February 24, 2024 24 Febrero 2024