Jeffrey Sachs Quotes
For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.
Jeffrey Sachs, Political Economist, How to End Poverty, 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
These loans come from either the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, both of which are headquartered in Washington. Usually, financially distressed countries participating in such a program have to agree to a series of economic reforms which the government of the country would not make if the pressure were not there. Therefore some like Goldsmith argue that there is a loss of sovereignty.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had proposed International Development Goal Benchmarks for donor organizations which was then officially endorsed by the World Bank, the IMF and the UN. But many people thought that many of these “benchmarks” were not only invalid but exacerbated some of the problems that they were trying to fix—especially in a developing country where structural factors inhibited class mobility and the focus was on large businesses and not small and “mom & pop” enterprises that poor could aspire to and benefit from.
The Bishop in this letter threatened to excommunicate the President because his economic policy was causing the death of babies and elderly people from malnutrition and lack of medical care and other basic services.
Criticism of the World Bank and the IMF was not limited to the turn of the century fights over development and globalization. The difficulty for the word financial institutions was and is that they believe that they have to work with whatever government is in power regardless of the legitimacy of that government or what kinds of anti-democratic methods they used to come to power and hold it. In this particular case, democracy had been displaced and right wing death squads were operating with impunity. For many, the World Bank and IMF are equally guilty for helping to prop these governments up and ignoring the gross Human Rights Violation which they failed to condemn.
A single payer system for health insurance saves an enormous amount of money—15 to 20 percent of all health payments made under all health insurance. However, this quotation from a leading Republican disclosed a split in the Republican Party. Many really would like the many billions of dollars that would be saved every year by having one organization pay all health insurance bills as Medicare did, but the large insurance companies, major contributors to Republicans, of course did not want to compete for the single payer where most would lose their administrative overhead and profits from the existing inefficient system. So austerity, normally a strong Republican principle, gave way to the profits of an important Republican contributor base.
Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. He is known as one of the world's leading experts on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight against poverty.
