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| | The World Bank & The IMF |
 | | That is, economies under adjustment are stuck in a low-level trap, in which low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output interact to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline, rather than a virtuous circle of growth, rising employment, and rising investment, as originally envisaged in World Bank theory. |
 | | Structural adjustment loans from the World Bank and the IMF were given to indebted countries to enable the latter to make their immediate interest payments to the western commercial banks. |
 | | Structural adjustment also worsened what was already a very skewed distribution of income, with the result that today, the top 20 percent of the continent's population earn 20 times that earned by the poorest 20 percent. |
| www.zmag.org /ZMag/articles/july94bello.htm (2256 words) |
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