Edward Goldsmith Quotes

The Bretton Woods agreement will enthrone a world dictatorship of private finance more complete and terrible than an Hitlerite dream. It offers no solution of world problems, but quite blatantly sets up controls which will reduce the smaller nations to vassal states and make every government the mouthpiece and tool of International Finance. It will undermine and destroy the democratic institutions.

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.

We must combat the over-riding interest of organizations such as The World Bank, The International Monetary fund … They work in collaboration of the most reactionary elements of Argentina.

In the field of economy, for instance, we … members of the developing world follow the currents of globalization, with conditions set by the rich countries, and at a speed dictated without our slightest input.

Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries.

The Muslim leaders swallow the advice of the Western powers and bodies like the IMF and World Bank, even when it is bad for their countries and they know this.

Nicaragua is a World Bank and International Monetary Fund designated 'heavily indebted poor country,' with little legal ability to control its economic future: Everything is for sale. And once Nicaraguans decide to cash in and sell their houses or farms, they have to look far inland for anything affordable.

In general the principle of the World Trade Organization … is that sovereignty and democratic rights have to be subordinated to the rights of investors

Political leaders cannot survive as advocates of near-permanent austerity on the basis of directives imposed from abroad.

We saw that the free market economy was not enough when the Harvard boys failed to deliver free market capitalism to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Development was--and continues to be for the most part--a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach that treats people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of 'progress.' ... It comes as no surprise that development became a force so destructive to third world cultures, ironically in the name of people's interests

In the early 1980s, the government of New Zealand fell into the hands of true believers, globalist believers, and they embraced the theory of inevitability perhaps more completely than anybody else. And it solved in the very short term some of their debt problems, but in the medium- and long-term, it left them in real economic trouble.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

In the 1980s, we were advised, why don't you follow Reaganomics or Thatcherite economics. We said, yes, there are good points, let's see how we can fit them in the Indian economy. Every country has its own way of moving forward.

The move towards neoliberalism in Britain was intimately bound up with the embrace of the U.S. as the country to be aped and copied.

During the 1990s the United States sought to impose the 'Washington Consensus' on Latin American governments. It embodied what Latin Americans call 'neo-liberal' principles: budget cuts, privatization, deregulation of business, and incentives for foreign companies. This campaign sparked bitter resistance and ultimately collapsed.

It is not really our country so much is the problem, it's sort of the parasitic relationship that Canada, and France, and other countries have towards us.

I became a Conservative in the late 1980s because I could see that the Conservative party had transformed Britain's economy and our standing in the world compared to Labour in the 1980s.

The idea of the World Bank loaning money to a nation that has a space program and is building nuclear submarines is just ridiculous.

Globalization has benefited middle-income less than either richer or poorer countries.

In the rich countries the poor expect a quantity and quality of commodities beyond the dreams of Louis XIV, while many of the so-called developing countries enjoy much higher economic growth rates than those of industrialized countries at a similar stage of their own histories.

The World Trade Organization is a fearful instrument of re-colonialization and exploitation

Africa has no time to lose. The global economy is fast leaving our continent behind.

We don’t have to send in troops; we can just call in loans.

The problem with the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] is that they have no constituency in the United States.