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Kenyans challenge their allotted role “Don’t give us $2bn loan, Kenyans tell IMF”, reports the Times.
A $2.34 billion bailout for Kenya from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has provoked anger among its citizens rather than relief.
Since the three-year package was disclosed, the IMF’s social media sites have been peppered with complaints under the hashtag #StopGivingKenyaLoans. A petition demanding that the loan be cancelled has gathered a quarter of a million signatures in a few days.
The east African state is already struggling to pay off debts that are expected to peak next year at 73 per cent of GDP. President Kenyatta has admitted that every day $18 million is lost from state coffers to corruption.
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In a post on the IMF Facebook page, Mwihaki Mwangi said that the loan would do more harm than good. “Stop lending money to the Kenyan government,” he wrote. “It ends up in a few corrupt pockets. No change in living standards to the common citizens. We are becoming poorer and poorer. Heavy taxes levied on our meagre salaries. Reverse the loans.”
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Maybe we in the UK should be doing the same. I find the fiscal incontinence of our government pretty worrying. Also, half of our problems are caused by unaccountable government funded organisations that we would be better off without.
I’m from the IMF and I’m here to help?
Transferring money from poor(-but-honest-enough-to-pay-taxes) people in rich countries to rich(-because-corrupt) people in poor countries.
And also to rich-because-corrupt people in rich countries, who farm the loans their nations fund: see, for example, Biden (Hunter), Biden (Joe, a.k.a ‘the big guy’), Burisma, “And guess what: the guy got fired”, etc.
It is good news that some not so rich people in poor countries are not merely noticing that “Your help is hurting” – I suspect they noticed that a while back – but are finally being noticed.
Of course, it is not just about corruption. These loans establish an unhealthy power balance between the citizens of poor countries and their rulers.
Too bad US citizens haven’t noticed that debt payments about to surpass the cost of the military (world police).
Somewhat related: the Grauniad gloats that no-one is too surprised about how corrupt Hunter Biden is:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/10/hunter-biden-scandal-republicans-trump
People pay far too little attention to the concept of Odious Debt. A petition by Kenyans that includes the promise of signatories to fight any repayment of that debt in the future on that basis might be more productive than simply demanding that the money not be loaned.
Simon Jester, I’m not sure how you got to that “somewhat related” from a piece about Kenya but never mind 🙂 … I was quite interested to see the piece you linked to. (BTW, not that it is clear from the website, but it is in the Observer, the Guardian‘s Sunday sister, not the Guardian itself.) If the Observer was confident that the US really was indifferent to the Hunter Biden revelations they would allow comments on stories about Hunter Biden.
My earlier comment might be responsible for providing the bridge.
+1 (and one hopes people in the states are commenting to those sceptical the election was stolen that the papers who told you there was no election fraud afterwards lied in silence about the Hunter story beforehand).
No more loans, no more IMF, no more World Bank as well.
Just NO to world “governance” and all the institutions, governmental and Corporate, involved in it.
When organisations such as the U.N. and the World Economic Forum organise conferences, governments should not send people to the conferences.
As for the specific position in East Africa – Tanzania avoided lockdowns and other Covid tyranny, I do not know what the position in Kenya was.
Sadly the death of the President of Tanzania is being taken advantage of to spread the agenda of the International Community (debt slavery and so on) to Tanzania.
This is one of those situations where Stein’s Law is comforting: “If something can’t go on forever … it won’t.”
‘You lent the money to these politicians, you claim it back off them and only them.‘ is the simple answer to the IMF. Personal liability of politicians for national debt, with the debt being worked off in tea or coffee farms by the individuals concerned would be an amenable resolution.
As Paul says, take the entire ‘Bretton Woods’ alphabet soup of agencies out of the equation, close it all down or if others keep it, leave it and deny entry to the UK to anyone who is engaged by these organisations. Turn the Bank of England into a museum of inflation and/or a nice hotel (cash or metal only). Freeze the monetary base and let economic growth restore value to the currency.
I’m beginning to think “arms dealer” might be a sacred calling. There clearly aren’t enough guns in the world when some microscopic fraction of transnational elite can (and they do think they can, they’re making their desperate grab right now) reduce the people of the world to debt slavery. Surely even the libertarians can see that there’s something wrong with 99.9% of the world being serfs on someone else’s plantation, whether there is some legal or market fig leaf for it or not.
If lenders make stupid loans, the lenders should be punished. They’ve betrayed the trust of their depositors, who are also screwed (what the various commies always forget), but some hellscape where no one owns anything but foreign aristocrats half a world a way is distinguishable from communism how?
There is a clear agency problem with allowing someone (the corrupt government, and which of them arent?) to make a loan (or accept a loan) on behalf of *anyone else* without their individual consent. This problem is being used to loot the world. The world you see around you today is dying because of it.
Remember – With world government, you’ll own nothing and be happy.
That is the insidious agenda that these bastards are working towards. Hanging is too good for them.