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Cash-Strapped, Call IMF, or China?

Mongolia is a huge blackhole, hardly being assured this neighbor is financially stable. You know, this nation has only 3 million population, more than 1.5 million square meters land. Even if they are as lazy as sloth, they could still lead a very good living. But they don't.

there's 2x more mongols in china than Mongolia lol and the ones in china actually know mongol scrip, not russian.
 
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We only need to win our Inner Mongolian brothers and Sisters's heart, we should make profit out of Outer Mongolians's wallets :D with let said 10% interest for loan and credit:lol:. Not to be nationalistic or selfish but I only care the well been of our Inner Mongolians, now let enjoy an nice song & dance from our Mongolians sisters.:dance3:


That's in fact what I also meant by "winning their wallets." :D Mongolia needs to be made dependent on China in every aspects of its economic development and sustainability. In the long term, this may even pave the way for an eventual unification, which would be the correction of an historical anomaly.

Of course, in present status quo, it is still a far-fetched realization.
 
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Mongolia is a huge blackhole, hardly being assured this neighbor is financially stable. You know, this nation has only 3 million population, more than 1.5 million square meters land. Even if they are as lazy as sloth, they could still lead a very good living. But they don't.

In modern age with global economy competition and technological progress, if you lag far far behind these two, you're condemned, that is the fate of this land lock country, no matter how big it is. A lot of Outer Mongolians have tp come to China to get merchandise because they don't have there.

 
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China bails out Pakistan with $1.2bn loans
Rising imports and falling exports and remittances revive threat of forex crisis

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Trade imbalance: China is backing the new port at Gwadar, but a Pakistani foreign exchange crisis looms even after $1bn of Chinese bailout loans for Islamabad © AFP

April 25, 2017 by: Kiran Stacey, Farhan Bokhari and Henny Sender in Islamabad

China has increased its economic sway in Pakistan during the past year, providing more than $1bn in loans to help its neighbour stave off a currency crisis. State-backed Chinese banks have twice come to the rescue of the nuclear-armed state, officials have told the Financial Times, with $900m in 2016 and $300m in the first three months of this year.

The loans demonstrate the perilous fragility of Pakistan’s stocks of foreign currency, depleted in recent months by rising imports and falls in exports and remittances from Pakistanis abroad. China’s financial help also underlines an increasingly close relationship at a time of strains between Pakistan and the US. Beijing is preparing to invest at least $52bn in Pakistan to build a highway, energy pipelines, power-generation facilities and industrial parks from the western port of Gwadar on the Gulf to the Chinese border to the north. But despite its expected benefits, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project is set to further deplete the foreign currency stocks, needed to pay contractors and suppliers. Figures from the State Bank of Pakistan show the country had $17.1bn of net reserves at the end of February, down from $18.9bn at the end of October. This has forced the country to seek emergency loans from outside sources to repay older loans made in foreign currencies.

Of the $1.2bn from the Chinese institutions, $600m came from the government-run China Development Bank and $600m from the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the only mainland bank with a branch in Pakistan. Policy banks such as CDB often act on behalf of the central bank.

One Pakistani official said: “China keeps a very close eye on our economic trends and they’re happy to come to our help wherever needed.”

But experts warn that Pakistan is likely to have to return to institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, to which it sought recourse in 2013, for further support.

Vaqar Ahmed, deputy executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, said: “Technically speaking we should have gone back to the IMF in January, but ministers are likely to try and wait until after the election [for parliament planned for 2018].”

One member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz told the Financial Times ministers were loath to turn to the IMF until after the election in an effort to limit the political fallout.

“The IMF is a politically volatile issue in our country. If we go to the IMF to deal with our needs, that will send a very negative political signal and the opposition [parties] will use that against the government,” the person said.​

It was only last year that Pakistan cleared the IMF debt incurred in 2013, a repayment that led policymakers in Islamabad and abroad to express optimism about prospects for economic stability. Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, called it a “moment of opportunity” for the country.

https://www.ft.com/content/3ae64c9a-ffd8-11e6-96f8-3700c5664d30
 
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No political strings, i.e. no color revolution and no need to overhaul your country's political system.

No need to restructure your economy or cannibalize your industries.

Only requirement - the project is sound, will create value and able to repay the loan.
Not quite like that. Pakistan took loans from China for CPEC projects and they can only buy items and hire companies from China.
 
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The IMF is at its weakest just as the world needs it most
May 8, 2017 11.10pm AEST
Alexander Tziamalis Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Economics and Consultant, Sheffield Hallam University


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In a globalised and dynamic economic system, there is a powerful and controversial organisation that has the economic firepower to bail out entire countries: the International Monetary Fund. The IMF plays an important role in the world but recent events have divided its members and weakened its potential to fulfil its role, threatening its very existence.

The creation of the IMF and the World Bank, two distinct but complementary organisations, was signed off at a conference in Bretton Woods in July 1944. That was near the end of World War II, when an air of international cooperation and solidarity blew across many nations that had allied to defeat Nazism. The IMF was designed to be independent yet accountable to the member countries – 189 today – that provide funds and elect its managing director, currently Christine Lagarde.

Its mandate is wide but the most important function is to act as the lender of last resort for economies that cannot secure borrowing at reasonable rates from the international money markets.

Historically, most clients of the IMF have been developing countries, but the 2008 financial crisis brought a sudden halt to the bank financing that kept the economies of the eurozone periphery ticking over. The IMF was called to help a number of these developed countries: Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus and Greece. And this is where the problems started.

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Anti-austerity protestors in Portugal, 2013. EPA/JOSE SENA GOULAO​

Loss of credibility

Difficulties in Greece and political pressure from powerful eurozone countries forced the fund to break its long-established and strict rule never to refinance a country’s debt if that debt is unsustainable. In other words: don’t give money if they won’t pay you back.

The primary objective, then, was to prevent the bankruptcy of a eurozone member, or at least postpone it until the others were strong enough to take the hit. The toxic Greek debt that had found its way to fragile banks throughout the currency union had to be “managed”, at least until European governments had compartmentalised it and some optimism and investment had returned to their economies.

Some member countries rightly observed that in Greece, the fund was using precious money from poor countries to support a relatively wealthy country. There was also a good chance that the money would be lost when eventually the Greek debt is written off.

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Greek Prime Minister Aexis Tsipras meets with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde in 2016. EPA/JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT​

The economic policies signed off by the IMF were also ineffective and possibly even counterproductive in the Greek case. There were disastrous miscalculations of the impact of various measures and, more importantly, a “quick-fix” approach that primed counterproductive increases in taxation instead of the deep structural reforms that were needed.

To be fair, Greek governments doggedly sought to avoid reforms that would entail political cost, but the IMF seemed to sign off policies that would sweep the Greek problems under the carpet rather than dealing with them.

Tensions

The Greek drama has aggravated a longstanding divide between the developed and developing country members of the IMF. For many in these emerging nations, the IMF has acted as a Western Trojan horse to subjugate the sovereignty and exploit the resources of countries in need.

They have a point. IMF policies invariably cause social dumping – the drafting in of low wage labour – that is beneficial to larger businesses. Former US president, Bill Clinton, criticised the IMF for causing starvation in countries it has been involved with. Robust research has linked IMF policies to weakening health systems and thousands of deaths, and to the suppression of labour rights. There is even evidence that IMF-sanctioned policies harm the environment, for example in Ecuador.

In granting loans, the IMF will push for trade liberalisation and the opening up of markets to international competition. But if this happens under unfavourable conditions it can lead to the extinction of the local industry and unfavourable terms of trade. Not even countries with strong industries have fully liberalised their trade.

The fund also follows a doctrine that views state companies as inherently inefficient and will therefore push for their quick (and cheap) privatisation. However, selling off key public companies can cause more problems than it solves, leading to monopolies, unreliable services, price hikes and dependency on other nations.

Grievances from developing countries are further validated by the IMF’s voting system, which favours the West: European countries together have about a third of the voting rights while their weight in the global economy is much smaller. China controls only about 6% of the votes. It is no coincidence that the managing director, the fund’s boss, is invariably a European.

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Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn heads to court in 2015. He was acquitted of charges that he instigated sex parties with prostitutes. EPA/YOAN VALAT​

alt-IMF

Such concerns have led to the creation of alternative institutions. In 2014, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa established the BRICS Contingency Reserve Arrangement with capital of US$100 billion. In the same year, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was set up by China and backed by another 25 nations. Back in 2011, the African Union established the African Monetary Fund.

When the IMF recently started to make sounds that it may not continue to fund Greece, some European countries threatened to establish their own European organisation. And across the Atlantic, the US government under President Donald Trump now looks at the IMF with disdain. Trump’s economic philosophy is diametrically opposed to the founding principles of the IMF, and the US appears to be heading towards an isolationist stance which spends dollars in the US, not in foreign states.

These pressures come at a tricky time, for right now you could argue that the IMF has never been so needed in the global economy. In a world that is becoming increasingly dynamic, globalised and at the same time nationalistic, The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation are still emblems of global co-operation and confidence. Without an institutional lender of last resort, nations will be at the mercy of panicky and greedy markets or, even worse, at the mercy of other nations. The existence of added risk in the global monetary system will eventually transform into fewer transactions and higher premiums, harming everybody.

Yet if the IMF is to fulfil its role, and indeed survive, it needs to change, and faster than it so far has. A good start would be going back to the ancient Greek basics: more equal voting, policies that respect the needs of local communities and rules that apply to everyone, weak or strong.

https://theconversation.com/the-imf-is-at-its-weakest-just-as-the-world-needs-it-most-76842
 
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