Hey remember the International Monetary Fund? The evil economic overlords who are the world’s leading experts in bringing countries out of poverty only they’ve never managed to do it once, leading some analysts and thousands of grungy protesters to wonder if they were maybe doing it on purpose because nobody’s that incompetent? The institution that has been humorously flailing ever since every Latin American country decided to refinance their debt with Venezuela, willing to pay double the going interest rate in order to keep what was left of their economies out of the hands of those jerkoffs?
Well they are officially broke. And by “broke” I mean, “running a whopping small-country-size $400-million annual deficit of its own and…being forced into some of the same kinds of ‘structural adjustments’ it used to impose on indebted Third World nations.” And if you found that sentence ridiculously satisfying to read, here’s the link to Mark Weisbrot’s column on the whole epic tragicomedy from Sunday’s LA Times. All of which might explain why IMF officials have been acting strangely… human lately.
