Abstract
The risk reassessment process having taken place after the outburst of the crisis of 2008 highlights the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a last resort lender. In this article, we try to evaluate the fiscal and political presuppositions of the IMF's recent history toward crediting countries, focusing particularly in the case of Greece. We try to unravel the specific neoliberal dogma suppressing the Greek people, and the practices through which it succeeds in this direction, concluding that debt accumulation is acting rather as a disciplinary force than as a request for repayment. Furthermore, we focus on the issues that come up along with debt relief process, and the policy shifts in the IMF's history, arguing that different strategies of capital are unfolding: a moderate New Keynesianism based on the capitalist “utopia” of the unburdened state, and another offensive neoliberalism based on an antagonistic relationship between the creditor and the debtor with reference to “biopolitics.”
Highlights
After the outburst of the subprime crisis and the nationalization of the private banking sector losses, states—especially those of the eurozone periphery—turned out to be heavily indebted
The article is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a brief history of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s involvement in the Global South debt crises, the policy framework of the IMF and the ongoing discourse on issues such as conditionality and debt relief; Section 3 sketches the specific characteristics of the Greek case, mentioning the fundamentals of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as a non-paradigm of the optimal currency area (OCA)
They perceived that providing the discipline, through market liberalization reforms, they could achieve an agreement that would encompass a debt relief, and there would be an alternative to “biopolitics.” At the same time, the scenario of a Euro-exit was not perceived as an alternative, since the Greek government was trapped in the notion of good faith and discipline
Summary
After the outburst of the subprime crisis and the nationalization of the private banking sector losses, states—especially those of the eurozone periphery—turned out to be heavily indebted. The EMU had practically deprived its member states from the ability to apply a national fiscal policy, whereas structural reforms having already taken place in the European Union (EU) had a dramatic impact in the productive capacity of the peripheral economies It was in this context that the so-called “Grexit” performed a “non-solution” both in economic and ideological terms, i.e., something that cannot be conceived, known, understood, named or been transmitted by means of the langue. The article is structured as follows: Section 2 provides a brief history of the IMF’s involvement in the Global South debt crises, the policy framework of the IMF and the ongoing discourse on issues such as conditionality and debt relief; Section 3 sketches the specific characteristics of the Greek case, mentioning the fundamentals of the EMU as a non-paradigm of the optimal currency area (OCA). Theory; Section 4 discusses on the political economy of debt, focusing on the case of Greece as the particular paradigm of discipline and Section 5 concludes
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