In June the IMF released an ex post assessment of its 2010 lending programme to Greece which described a series of errors and found that the Fund consciously chose to break its own rules on the sustainability of the programme.
Greece
Conditionality
News
Democracy: "an enemy to the IMF"?
The legitimacy of IMF engagement with Middle East and North African nations and eurozone crisis countries continues to be heavily criticised.
Finance
News
The Troika setting a "default trap"?
Controversy erupted in January after the IMF implied lenders to Greece may need to provide yet more debt relief, while the social and economic sustainability of other Troika (the lending triumvirate comprising the Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission) programmes is still in question.
Conditionality
News
IMF controversy: is austerity backfiring?
The IMF's shift in stance regarding easing Greece's debt burden reflects a deepening controversy about whether austerity policies are counter-productive.
Accountability
Background
Global financial regulations and their Impact on major campaigns
This event was a collegial information-sharing and strategy session to explore the linkages between financial regulations and grass roots campaigns.
Conditionality
News
IMF's "incompetence" and "failures" in Europe led to "suffering"
The IMF's role as a member of the Troika, the grouping of the European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission and the Fund in the eurozone crisis, is attracting new criticism. Deepening recessions in eurozone nations have brought the efficacy and appropriateness of Troika-led reforms into question.
Conditionality
News
Eurozone meltdown: IMF providing "political cover"
As European elections show the public increasingly rejecting austerity, critics call on the IMF to focus on the flaws of the eurozone rather than austerity in country programmes.
Social services
News
IMF in Europe: doomed to fail?
The IMF has scaled back its percentage stake in the Greek loan package but remains assertive in the eurozone, calling for more austerity raising questions over whether periphery nations will play along.
Social services
News
Bondholders vs the public: Outcry over IMF-EU eurozone loans
The sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone, where Greece now needs a second round of loans, threatens major economies like Spain and Italy, but IMF-backed lending packages that demand deep austerity with insufficient attention to lenders' responsibilities anger the public.
Conditionality
Analysis
Saying one thing but meaning another: IMF advises protecting jobs and cutting spending
While Hungary has booted out the IMF, Greece is still toeing the line of IMF austerity demands. The IMF has softened its rhetoric in some places, notably on unemployment, but critics worry that many staff are still pushing fiscal retrenchment that may damage growth prospects.
Social services
Commentary
The Greek crisis and the involvement of the IMF
The “Greek expression” of the crisis has revealed an amazingly broad range of issues not only concerning the structural problems of the Greek economy, but also those of the European Union (EU) as an economic and currency area, and its unwillingness or inability to react to the problem in a timely, meaningful and collective way.
