THE International Monetary Fund seemed like such a good idea. That idea, in the hopeful post-war days of the 1940s, was to have a bank that would rescue countries in financial difficulties and put them back on track. Like a wise uncle, it would loan them cash to tide them over, on the condition that they balanced their budgets by making "structural adjustments". Unfortunately, this uncle has proved not to be as wise as was hoped. To achieve structural adjustments, governments have been forced to slash their spending on services needed for long-term economic health: education, agriculture and healthcare.
Plenty of anecdotal evidence exists for the negative impact of IMF loans. A decade ago, frustrated African doctors were calling it the Infant Mortality Fund because of what happened to child survival rates when it started guiding government spending.
This week comes news that tuberculosis deaths, a sensitive indicator of ...
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