The International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an international organization that provides financial assistance and advice to member countries. This article will discuss the main functions of the organization, which has become an enduring institution integral to the creation of financial markets worldwide and to the growth of developing countries.
History:
The International Monetary Fund was originally laid out as a part of the Bretton Woods system exchange agreement in 1944. During the earlier Great Depression, countries sharply raised barriers to foreign trade in an attempt to improve their failing economies. This led to the devaluation of national currencies and a decline in world trade.
This breakdown in international monetary co-operation created a need for oversight. The representatives of 45 governments met at the Bretton Woods Conference in the Mount Washington Hotel in the area of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States, to discuss framework for post-World War II international economic co-operation. The participating countries were concerned with the rebuilding of Europe and the global economic system after the war.
There were two views on the role the IMF should assume as a global economic institution. British economist John Maynard Keynes imagined that the IMF would be a cooperative fund upon which member states could draw to maintain economic activity and employment through periodic crises. This view suggested an IMF that helped governments and to act as the US government had during the New Deal in response to World War II. American delegate Harry Dexter White foresaw an IMF that functioned more like a bank, making sure that borrowing states could repay their debts on time. Most of White's plan was incorporated into the final acts adopted at Bretton Woods.
The International Monetary Fund formally came into existence on 27 December 1945, when the first 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement. By the end of 1946 the Fund had grown to 39 members. On 1 March 1947, the IMF began its financial operations, and on 8 May France became the first country to borrow from it.
The IMF was one of the key organisations of the international economic system; its design allowed the system to balance the rebuilding of international capitalism with the maximisation of national economic sovereignty and human welfare, also known as embedded liberalism.[26] The IMF's influence in the global economy steadily increased as it accumulated more members. The increase reflected in particular the attainment of political independence by many African countries and more recently the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union because most countries in the Soviet sphere of influence did not join the IMF.
The Bretton Woods system prevailed until 1971, when the US government suspended the convertibility of the US$ (and dollar reserves held by other governments) into gold. This is known as the Nixon Shock.
Since 2000:
In May 2010, the IMF participated, in 3:11 proportion, in the first Greek bailout that totalled €110bn.This bailout was notable for several reasons: the funds were funnelled directly to the (largely European) private bondholders, which endured no haircuts to the chagrin of the Swiss, Brazilian, Indian, Russian, and Argentinian Directors; the Greek authorities (at the time, George Papandreou and Giorgos Papakonstantinou) themselves ruled out a haircut of the private bondholders; the Greek private sector was happy to curtail the 13th and 14th month civil service pay scheme, because the Greek government was otherwise impotent.A second bailout package of more than €100bn was agreed over the course of a few months from October 2011, during which time Papandreou was forced from office. The so-called Troika, of which the IMF is part, are joint managers of this programme, which was approved by the Executive Directors of the IMF on 15 March 2012 for SDR23.8bn,and which saw private bondholders take a haircut of upwards of 50%. In the interval between May 2010 and February 2012 the private banks of Holland, France and Germany managed to reduce their exposure to Greek debt from a total of €122bn to a total of €66bn.
As of January 2012, the largest borrowers from the IMF in order were Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Romania and Ukraine.
On 25 March 2013, a €10bn international bailout of Cyprus was agreed by the Troika, at the cost to the Cypriots of its agreement: to close the country's second-largest bank; to impose a one-time bank deposit levy on all uninsured deposits there. No insured deposit of €100k or less were to be affected under the terms of a novel bail-in scheme.
In the October 2013 Financial Monitor publication, the IMF suggested that a capital levy capable of reducing Euro-area government debt ratios to "end-2007 levels" would require a very high tax rate; about 10 percent.
The Fiscal Affairs department of the IMF, headed by Dr. Sanjeev Gupta, produced in January 2014 a report entitled "Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality" which stated that "Some taxes levied on wealth, especially on immovable property, are also an option for economies seeking more progressive taxation.... Property taxes are equitable and efficient, but underutilized in many economies.... There is considerable scope to exploit this tax more fully, both as a revenue source and as a redistributive instrument."
At the end of March 2014, the IMF secured an $18bn bailout fund for the provisional government of the Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.
Positive views of the IMF:

Is there any harder job than regulating all of the international markets money? Probably not, the topic being discussed throughout this essay will be the international monetary fund and its involvement in the international market. Much has been said about the I.M.F whether it is positive or negative, neo-Marxist Che Guevara said “The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.” Here he criticizes how the IMF is considered to be run by the United States which occupies a veto power in the decision making at the IMF, this is important to see because it brings up the other side to the IMF, the side that is not so positive and the one that people feel very critical of. Even though people like Che and Stieglitz bring up the negative characteristics of the IMF it is not the only qualities that the fund has. The IMF has also has many positive qualities, this essay will go over these qualities by looking at the IMF’s debt restructuring cases, looking at how the decisions are made in the fund and finally the long term positive effect that the IMF has on promoting democracy.

As mentioned before the IMF has gone through much criticism in past years, yet the work they have done on debt relief has done much to boost up their reputation. Cases like Argentina, the Dominican Republic and much more show that the IMF is very capable of improving conditions within a country by debt restructuring programs. In 2005 the IMF started debt reconstruction in Argentina, the process was held back more that they would have liked due to court proceedings in New York. After this delay the IMF was able to do some real work in debt exchange with Argentina. The country participated 76% in the debt exchange and since then they have seen much improvements in their debt structure and debt-profile.

1. The IMF has created an immoral system of modern day colonialism that SAPs the poor
The IMF -- along with the WTO and the World Bank -- has put the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction. Eliminate basic food and transportation subsidies; devalue national currencies to make exports cheaper; privatize national assets; and freeze wages. Such belt-tightening measures increase poverty, reduce countries' ability to develop strong domestic economies and allow multinational corporations to exploit workers and the environment A recent IMF loan package for Argentina, for example, is tied to cuts in doctors' and teachers' salaries and decreases in social security payments.. The IMF has made elites from the Global South more accountable to First World elites than their own people, thus undermining the democratic process. 2. The IMF serves wealthy countries and Wall Street
Unlike a democratic system in which each member country would have an equal vote, rich countries dominate decision-making in the IMF because voting power is determined by the amount of money that each country pays into the IMF's quota system. It's a system of one dollar, one vote. Germany, Japan, France, Great Britain, and the US combined control about 38 percent. The disproportionate amount of power held by wealthy countries means that the interests of bankers, investors and corporations from industrialized countries are put above the needs of the world's poor majority. 3. The IMF is imposing a fundamentally flawed development model
Unlike the path historically followed by the industrialized countries, the IMF forces countries from the Global South to prioritize export production over the development of diversified domestic economies. Nearly 80 percent of all malnourished children in the developing world live in countries where farmers have been forced to shift from food production for local consumption to the production of export crops destined for wealthy countries. The IMF also requires countries to eliminate assistance to domestic industries while providing benefits for multinational corporations -- such as forcibly lowering labor costs. Small businesses and farmers can't compete. The cycle of poverty is perpetuated, not eliminated, as governments' debt to the IMF grows. 4. The IMF is a secretive institution with no accountability
The IMF is funded with taxpayer money, yet it operates behind a veil of secrecy. Members of affected communities do not participate in designing loan packages. The IMF works with a select group of central bankers and finance ministers to make polices without input from other government agencies such as health, education and environment departments. The institution has resisted calls for public scrutiny and independent evaluation. 5. To increase exports, countries are encouraged to give tax breaks and subsidies to export industries. Public assets such as forestland and government utilities (phone, water and electricity companies) are sold off to foreign investors at rock bottom prices. In Guyana, an Asian owned timber company called Barama received a logging concession that was 1.5 times the total amount of land all the indigenous communities were granted. Barama also received a five-year tax holiday. The IMF forced Haiti to open its market to imported, highly subsidized US rice at the same time it prohibited Haiti from subsidizing its own farmers. A US corporation called Early Rice now sells nearly 50 percent of the rice consumed in Haiti.

6.The IMF hurts workers
The IMF and World Bank frequently advise countries to attract foreign investors by weakening their labor laws -- eliminating collective bargaining laws and suppressing wages, for example. The IMF's mantra of "labor flexibility" permits corporations to fire at whim and move where wages are cheapest. According to the 1995 UN Trade and Development Report, employers are using this extra "flexibility" in labor laws to shed workers rather than create jobs. In Haiti, the government was told to eliminate a statute in their labor code that mandated increases in the minimum wage when inflation exceeded 10 percent. By the end of 1997, Haiti's minimum wage was only $2.40 a day. Workers in the U.S. are also hurt by IMF policies because they have to compete with cheap, exploited labor. The IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis plunged South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and other countries into deep depression that created 200 million "newly poor." The IMF advised countries to "export their way out of the crisis." Consequently, more than US 12,000 steelworkers were laid off when Asian steel was dumped in the US.
7.The IMF's policies hurt women the most
SAPs make it much more difficult for women to meet their families' basic needs. When education costs rise due to IMF-imposed fees for the use of public services (so-called "user fees") girls are the first to be withdrawn from schools. User fees at public clinics and hospitals make healthcare unaffordable to those who need it most. The shift to export agriculture also makes it harder for women to feed their families. Women have become more exploited as government workplace regulations are rolled back and sweatshops abuses increase.

8.IMF Policies hurt the environment: IMF loans and bailout packages are paving the way for natural resource exploitation on a staggering scale. The IMF does not consider the environmental impacts of lending policies, and environmental ministries and groups are not included in policy making. The focus on export growth to earn hard currency to pay back loans has led to an unsustainable liquidation of natural resources. For example, the Ivory Coast's increased reliance on cocoa exports has led to a loss of two-thirds of the country's forests.
9.The IMF bails out rich bankers, creating a moral hazard and greater instability in the global economy
The IMF routinely pushes countries to deregulate financial systems. The removal of regulations that might limit speculation has greatly increased capital investment in developing country financial markets. More than $1.5 trillion crosses borders every day. Most of this capital is invested short-term, putting countries at the whim of financial speculators. The Mexican 1995 peso crisis was partly a result of these IMF policies. When the bubble popped, the IMF and US government stepped in to prop up interest and exchange rates, using taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street bankers. Such bailouts encourage investors to continue making risky, speculative bets, thereby increasing the instability of national economies. During the bailout of Asian countries, the IMF required governments to assume the bad debts of private banks, thus making the public pay the costs and draining yet more resources away from social programs.
10.IMF bailouts deepen, rather then solve, economic crisis
During financial crises -- such as with Mexico in 1995 and South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and Russia in 1997 -- the IMF stepped in as the lender of last resort. Yet the IMF bailouts in the Asian financial crisis did not stop the financial panic -- rather, the crisis deepened and spread to more countries. The policies imposed as conditions of these loans were bad medicine, causing layoffs in the short run and undermining development in the long run. In South Korea, the IMF sparked a recession by raising interest rates, which led to more bankruptcies and unemployment. Under the IMF imposed economic reforms after the peso bailout in 1995, the number of Mexicans living in extreme poverty increased more than 50 percent and the national average minimum wage fell 20 percent.