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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
The One Percent Rallies Behind IMF Director Christine Lagarde — Paul Craig Roberts
The One Percent Rallies Behind IMF Director Christine LaGarde
Paul Craig Roberts
Washington removed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the leading contender for the French presidency and as director of the IMF by framing him on phony charges of raping a New York hotel maid. The obviously false charge was proven to be totally fabricated and had to be dropped. In the meantime Strass-Kahn had been forced to resign from the IMF and to drop out of the French election. Washington regarded Strauss-Kahn as insufficiently compliant with Washington’s agendas and moved him aside.
Washington got its vassal, Hollande, elected President of France, and replaced Strauss-Kahn at the IMF with the “rhymes-with-witch” Christine LaGarde.
LaGarde serves only the One Percent. She overturned the decision by the IMF’s professional staff that the Greek debt had to be written down to a sum that the country could afford to service. Instead, LaGarde enabled the One Percent to loot the Greek nation and the Greek people, forcing many young Greek women into prostitution in order to have money for food.
As Stephen Lendman points out below, LaGarde’s crimes have caught up with her. When she was French finance minister she ruled against the interest of France in order to benefit the tycoon Bernard Tapie. Corrupt prosecutors tried to cover it up, but the French judicial system has ruled that she must stand trial. http://www.wsj.com/articles/imf-chief-lagarde-ordered-to-stand-trial-in-france-1450373023 Despite the judicial order that she stand trial, she has not had to resign as IMF director. The One Percent protects its own. The IMF’s executive board “continues to express its confidence in the Managing Director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties.”
No such expression of confidence was given to Strauss-Kahn when he was
arrested on obviously false charges.
IMF Chief Lagarde to Stand Trial
by Stephen Lendman
Charges are unrelated to her greatest crimes – representing the US-controlled IMF and Western monied interests at the expense of beneficial social change.
The agency is a bandit operation, the loan shark lender of last resort, force-feeding economic and financial harshness on nations in return for loans – followed by new ones needed to pay debt service, an endless cycle of debt peonage, monied interests profiting hugely.
Ordinary people suffer greatly as expected. So do debt-entrapped countries, forced to obey harsh IMF diktats – incompatible with social democracy, civil and human rights.
Nations are strip-mined of their resources, material wealth, state enterprises, and other crown jewels – transferred from public to private hands, hollowed out into dystopian backwaters, their people able to have jobs transformed into serfs.
Except for the privileged few, the result is the worst of all possible worlds – wracked by extreme poverty, hunger, malnutrition, diseases and early usually painful death.
Washington got Lagarde appointed – to serve as a neoliberal maestro of misery.
Her activities as French finance minister were investigated earlier for serious improprieties – specifically a controversy pitting tycoon Bernard Tapie against the French state.
She issued a beneficial 405 million euro arbitration order earlier in his favor, against the government she was sworn to serve.
The French Court of Cassation (its highest judicial body) Attorney General Jean-Louis Nadal earlier ordered the Tapie dossier made public, including allegations indicating Lagarde circumvented the law – to benefit Tapie illegally, overriding an appeals court ruling against him.
A French judicial commission ordered Lagarde to stand trial. She’s charged with negligence in the long-running so-called L’Affaire Tapie. He was ordered to repay his windfall.
Observers called France’s Cour de Justice de la Republique judicial commission ruling last Thursday a surprise. In September, prosecutors recommended things be dropped.
Her legal team issued a statement, saying “Ms. Lagarde would like to reaffirm that she acted in the best interest of the French State and in full compliance with the law.”
She’s appealing the ruling against her. Things could drag on for many months before concluding.
IMF communications director Gerry Rice issued a statement, saying “(t)he Executive Board continues to express its confidence in the Managing Director’s ability to effectively carry out her duties.”
He stopped short of explaining her mandate is benefitting powerful monied interests at the expense of everyone else.
Expect no interruption in business as usual at the agency she heads – with full US support.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.