IMF Head Christine Lagarde Saving the World?

 by James E. Miller
Don’t make me laugh.
In what can only be viewed as a glowing and adoring profile, the BBC highlights the efforts by International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde to contain the ongoing Eurozone crisis.

For the past month Ms Lagarde has given the BBC unusual behind-the-scenes access as she steers her 187-member organisation to manage the biggest financial crisis of our lifetimes – thefiscal nightmare that is the eurozone.
Her conviction that the euro crisis leaves no country immune is what is driving Ms Lagarde to ask the world to help pay for a $500bn (£314bn) global firewall. It is a job that keeps her extremely busy and extremely mobile.
On that travel occasion she was on her way to Mexico City for a meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and she invited us to join her.
This summit is a chance to pass around the IMF cap for those hundreds of billions of dollars. She uses all her easy charm and lawyer’s training to cajole non-eurozone countries to surrender their domestic interests to the greater global good.

As any adherent to the Austrian school, or common sense in general, should know, the oft-mentioned “common good” or “global good” is a complete non sequitur used by those desperate to throw an appealing facade over their true intentions.  Like the public sector union which invokes images of uneducated and starving children or a large corporation painting itself as a fighter for the working man by endorsing further labor regulations such as a raising of the minimum wage, these seemingly noble goals are not so angelic at their core.  Public sector unions, like any organization run by men acting purposefully, strive to maintain their relevancy and cash flow.  Convincing politicians and Joe Taxpayer that the blood of a million dead children are on their hands if they fail to funnel more funds to their cause- that is employing more government employees- is a clever way to keep the pork flowing.  Same goes for the chain of big box department stores which petition for an increase of the minimum wage.  Despite all evidence that mandated wage floors perpetuate poverty by pricing less productive members of society out of the labor force, advocates of the minimum wage enjoy the law because it imposes a higher cost on their small time competitors.
When it comes to the Eurozone crisis, those in favor of the bailouts don’t have a shred of concern for the taxpayers footing the bills.  As has been pointed out many, many times on LvMIC, the real beneficiaries of the European Central Bank and IMF’s attempt to shove the PIIGS full of liquidity are the banks which hold their debt.  Taki Theodoracopulos sums up the situation perfectly in regard to Greece:

The Greeks cannot and will not ever be able to pay the debt and interest simply because even under the cruelest austerity by the year 2020 the deficit will still be more than the GDP. Most likely the economy is in freefall and will continue to fall for years to come. The Euro Scum Elite know this but have an agenda of their own—keeping their perks and positions of power in Brussels—so they are immune to Greek suffering.
The ones suffering are the innocent poor made up of those who work for a salary in the private sector, pensioners, and small businessmen and women.

Lagarde isn’t saving the world; she is saving the governments which fund her employer and the banks which fund those governments that in turn receive all types of special privileges such as cartelizing regulations that cut off entrepreneurial competition and a spot at first receivership of newly printed currency.  Since Lagarde used to hold a prominent position in the French government as Economic Minister, was previously chairwoman of the international law firm Baker & McKenzie, and was firmly against any debt restructuring prior to her role at the IMF,  it’s not hard to pinpoint where her allegiances lie.  To further drive the point home, see this interview where Lagarde openly admits that during times of crisis, which is the only way to accurately describe the situation in the EZ, the IMF grows in authority and influence.
Put simply, there is no such thing as the “global good.”  Evaluating positives and negatives is only done on an individual basis.  Groups don’t act, only individuals do.  As Murray Rothbard writes:

Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as ends of or actions by “groups,” “collectives,” or “States,” which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals. “Societies” or “groups” have no independent exist­ence aside from the actions of their individual members. Thus, to say that “governments” act is merely a metaphor; actually, certain individuals are in a certain relationship with other in­dividuals and act in a way that they and the other individuals recognize as “governmental.”

The BBC article surprisingly acknowledges that national sovereignty is being choked to a slow death in order to ensure the bailouts keep coming.  The fallacy comes when the phrase “asking” is used since the funding for the IMF comes from governments themselves which don’t ask their citizens to pay taxes but merely swindles money by the threat of imprisonment.  What Lardge heads is not some divine institution serving as the world’s guardian against fiscal calamities but a blackmailing racket to ensure holders of government debt rarely see any repercussions for their less-than-stellar investing habits and to promote inflation on a global scale.

Thankfully, more and more people are catching on to the scheme as demonstrated by this excellent video of Irish journalist Vincent Browne recently taking on a banker with the ECB.  Watch and enjoy:
James E. Miller holds a BS in public administration with a minor in business from Shippensburg University, PA. He is a former staff columnist to the Shippensburg Slate and current contributor to his hometown newspaper, the Middletown Press and Journal. He is also the chief blogger at Mises.ca. Read his blog.