The U.S. Treasury Department plans to ask Congress very soon for authorization to sell part of the IMF’s stock of gold. Treasury and the IMF say that the proceeds would be used for debt relief, but in fact most of the money would end up going to the IMF’s Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF).

The last few months have brought forth an unprecedented number of proposals from governments and politicians regarding international debt. While the issue has long been given lip service by the IMF and World Bank and by the Finance Ministries and Treasury Departments of the G-7 countries, there is now, suddenly, a race by the various governments to prove their seriousness and compassion.

Declaration: Addressing the Global Economic Crisis From a Conference - "Toward a Progressive International Economy" - held in Washington, DC, December 9-10, 1998

Many of the proposals for debt relief currently being tabled by G-7 leaders -- including President Clinton -- rely on the sale of part of the IMF's hoard of gold for financing. In itself, using the IMF's gold to benefit the poorest countries through debt relief is a very good idea. Indeed, NGOs have long proposed precisely this move.

A hurricane or natural disaster hits two equally populated territories with the same force. Why is it that the human damage can be so much higher in one settlement than in another? And why does it take more time to recover in one than in the other?

Shortly before noon, on Good Friday (April 2), a group of us gathered at the West Steps of the U.S. Capitol to commence the Economic Way of the Cross. Sponsored by the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and the IMF (RWG), this year's Economic Way of the Cross focused on international debt. We proceeded to 14 stations (such as the Justice Department, the Labor Department, the Treasury Department, and the World Bank) to commemorate the burdens of the impoverished in U.S. society and societies around the world, and to highlight the complicity of these institutions in creating those burdens.

As the brutal reality of the harm that the global economy does to the poor and the environment manifested itself throughout the world in 1998, the political and intellectual support for the economic liberalization model began to crack. In an effort to pound a chisel into this crack and to offer an alternative to the countless calls by the elite for a "new global financial architecture" - Friends of the Earth-US, the Institute for Policy Studies and the Third World Network brought progressives from around the world to Washington, DC for a conference on international finance and investment. Participants at the conference, "Toward a Progressive International Economy," developed a set of principles, proposals, and strategies to solve the current crises and to prevent future ones.

Member organizations of the 50 Years Is Enough Network are involved in important campaigns to end sweatshop abuses. These campaigns put a human face on several core World Bank/IMF issues.

Commonly called the "Tobin Tax," after James Tobin, the Nobel laureate economist who originated the concept, this tax would deter short-term or overnight trades, and thus shrink the volume of daily currency trading from its present $1.5 trillion daily level. Such a shrinkage would restore each nation’s ability to control its own currency, as well as generate revenue.

Women’s labor is the unarticulated ingredient in the World Bank/ IMF formula for the ‘economic success’ that includes cutting subsidies to public services, shifting from food crops to export crops, and attracting foreign investment with a low wage labor pool. If women and their labor are central to the processes of globalization, are they not entitled to the fullness of their rights: the right to work, the right to social protection, the right to bodily integrity?