[Mike20433]

2. Americans are greedy capitalists that want to push free trade on poor countries to milk them dry. Old dependency theory given new life! Why? Because that is what everybody believes, right?! Well the fact is that over the last 20 years, poor countires with free trade have been shown to develop faster (AT ALL SOCIOECONOMIC LEVELS) than poor countries with policies of protectionalism. This this mean that capitalism is a complete good. No. There is some truth in the idea that capitalism needs to be amended to provide greater job security and benifits for the working poor. However, that does not mean that Capitialism itself is wrong (nor free trade). To argue that there is no support for free trade as a developmental tool is to ignore the last half century of solid American AND AFRICAN research. Also, whether we like it or not, America is the sole remaining superpower. In many ways this makes for a no win situation in American World Economic policy. If Americans don’t provide financial aid to developing countries (think IMF loans), they are percieved as being greedy capitalists blind to the poor. If they do provide the loans, they are percieved as being imperialist and trying to force Americanization on foreign governments. In the case of Argentina 2001 and 2002, America is now often bashed FOR giving loans to corrupt governments of the 90s and not forcing them to clean shop; while only a year ago, Americans were being routinely bashed FOR NOT giving enough money to Argentina and trying to interfere with with their domestic politics by giving such strick anti-corruption guidelines on the loans! No-Win situation! Americans even recognized the catch-22 and tried to move in the last year to make IMF loans into grants, as to cut off the criticms of the imperialist nature of loans (and forcing countries to meet their guidelines), but this iniative was killed by the European members who felt that grants would lead to wasting money by not holding the recieving countries more accountable. YET, it is the Americans who always take the fall when the IMF is blamed for imperialism and neo-colonialism!

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Name : Mike20433, City : New York, State : NY, Country : United States, 

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