Pillaging the World. The History and Politics of the IMF

Depriving entire generations of their hopes for a better future, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has risen to become the world's most powerful international financial organization. Blackmailing countries and pillaging whole continents for almost seven decades now, its history resembles a modern-day crusade against the working people on five continents. In his highly compelling account, journalist Ernst Wolff specifies the dramatic consequences of the IMF's practice of loan sharking and implementing neoliberal austerity measures. While exacerbating poverty, increasing hunger, furthering the spread of diseases and fuelling armed conflicts on the one hand, the Fund's policies have on the other hand helped a tiny group of ultra-rich profiteers increase their vast fortunes to immeasurable dimensions - allegedly in the name of ensuring the stability of the global financial system. // Ernst Wolff, born in 1950, spent his early childhood in South East Asia, went to school in Germany and studied history and philosophy in the US. He has worked in various professions, including journalism, translating and screenwriting. The interrelation between economics and politics, a subject he has been working on for four decades, has become of paramount significance to him. "The financial crisis of 2008 and the euro crisis were mere precursors of an impending financial tsunami whose destructive power the IMF and its allies will most certainly use as a pretext for globally imposing measures the likes of which we cannot even vaguely imagine at present."