RESULTS gets the IMF wrong

RESULTS is promoting dangerous half-truths about the IMF, and diluting its core message in so doing. I continue to support the important work that RESULTS does to improve education, public health, and microfinance around the world. I continue to support its approach to advocacy, which uses outreach to journalists and constituent requests for specific legislative appropriations. But the policy staff is out of its depth with its needless and baseless vilification of the IMF.

RESULTS’ policy staff is capable of extremely precise writing on economic and social issues. In the section on the IMF, however, value judgments, perjorative adverbs, and accusations of anachronism substitute for any concrete proof that the staff’s ideas hold true. Examples:

• “prioritized extremely low inflation”
• “policies may have seemed appropriate”
• “policies are no longer appropriate”
• “immediate consequences … included steep layoffs”
• “IMF policies have prevented countries from adequately investing in public infrastructure and workforce”
• “restrictive spending policies”
• “the inflation reductions that the IMF desires”
• “targets are so much lower than many economists outside the IMF believe they need to be”
• “unemployed nurses…because the government cannot afford to hire them.”
• “anti-growth, restrictive deficit and inflation targets”

Iraqi Virtual Science Library needs a marketing director

The Iraqi Virtual Science Library boasts an impressive list of partners and resources. American universities created IVSL in response to Iraq’s forcible isolation from the world of research and scholarship under Saddam.

Scholars here are thirsty for new knowledge. They know they need access to journals and current datasets to practice modern science. The trouble is, they don’t know what resources they have available.

Both the faculty and the students here, independently, have asked me to use my credit card to help them pay for World Bank datasets. [For clarity: their money, using my credit card as a payment system.] They know what journals and data they are looking for, and they want to get into the game.

Free IMF International Financial Statistics for Iraqi Academic Institutions

To my new friends on the University of Duhok faculty:
Please be advised that the IMF provides access to their incomparable International Financial Statistics free of charge to Iraqi universities. The University of Duhok is currently in negotiations with the IMF to register for free access.
This resource will be of invaluable access to your research.