In class we were discussing what methods we could use to fix the whole system of conflicts of interests within the US Government and the subsequent financial sector. Basically, it’ll be insanely hard to actually have any kind of real change with everything so ingrained in the current US system. It would basically take an entire overhaul to remove all the conflicts of interest.
So our professor mentioned at the end, as we were leaving, that maybe the IMF could regulate that way you don’t have varying policies between the big countries and theoretically you could also remove the banking influence on the regulation.
In a complex, interrelated-sector economy, it’s completely impossible to eliminate conflicts of interest. To try to eliminate them would be a fool’s errand. All that can be done is to police such conflicts and provide remedies when they occur.
The IMF, in theory, could do what you mention, but as it would involve a massive forfeit of national sovereignity, no country would allow it. It also should not happen because the IMF has no teeth (no real enforcement arm), and all they could really do is make suggestions.
Rather than try to regulate an entire economy (which would be like trying to herding cats that were each trying to herd mice who were each trying to herd fleas), I’d suggest regulating a major core element, like banking.
Not that the IMF would be the ones to do it - rather each country should look into what banking regulatory practices work in other countries and adapt them, ideally to the point where each nation has a rock-steady core of banking stability isolated from short-term politics and unchecked greed.
Basically, Canada’s banking regulations go global.
The basis criticism of the IMF from its opponents is that it is a tool for the US and other western nations to pursue their own interests. If so, putting the IMF in charge would not bring about any fundamental changes in the way the West works.
The IMF is a poor tool for that job for the reason Tom Tildrum states, but the only organizations that would have some validity would also be incompetent at it. Let’s say you create a world regulatory body run equally by all countries. Since most countries are still cesspools of corruption and incompetence, this organization would be as well.
Personally, I think the US federal government should just be the world government. The federal government has already assumed extraconstitutional powers through the power of the purse, there’s no reason we can’t extend that power around the world. Just start say, a program to build roads around the world, and make that road funding contingent on doing everything we say. Other nations can be brought into line the same way the states are.
Actually, the spending clause. Congress doesn’t have the power to regulate the drinking age under any clause, but it does so by tying road funding to state implementation of the 21 drinking age. No reason we couldn’t extend that worldwide if we’re willing to spend the money.
I’m not being totally serious, of course, I wouldn’t want the US to be a world government. But it can be done, in the same way the US government slipped its constitutional bonds to control the states.
I’m not sure the U.S. economy is much of a model, what with it’s own boom-and-bust cycles. The lack of regulation might make it more exciting, and certainly some people can get very rich very fast, but you could only export the philosophies by force, and you have barely a fraction of the necessary muscle.
Are you somehow under the impression that the US federal government is not a cesspool of corruption and incompetence? (Well, corruption, anyway. It might, perhaps, be competent if given a chance to govern.)
Worse than that, because of the atherosclerotic US constitution, written for the white, male landowning population of 13 tiny 18th century colonies on edge of a wilderness, the USA is scarcely capable of taking any of the important decisions it needs to govern itself any more.
:rolleyes: That’s a bizarre argument. Syria can tell us to shut up and ignore us, and short of militarily attacking them we can’t force them to do otherwise; they’re a sovereign nation. Montana’s just a state, an administrative distinct of the US. If the Federal government were to properly enact a federal drinking age, then Montana would have to go along with it; federal law trumps state. Taxes are besides the point.
There is no proper way to enact a federal drinking age. Thus the need to tie it to road funding. And states are sovereign, they are not actually administrative districts. If they were, then governors would serve at the pleasure of the President as is the case in countries where they actually have administrative districts.
The U.S. is not exceptional in this regard - lots of countries have internal political structures with leaders who do not serve at the pleasure of the national executive.
Anyway, vapid exceptionalism claims aside… no, the IMF should not regulate national economies. What I can imagine actually working is the G7/G8/G20 nations agreeing that certain standards of corporate behaviour will be regulated within their borders. I don’t blame a multinational corporation for doing what it is supposed to - seek out business opportunities for the benefit of its shareholders - and naturally they’re going to exploit these opportunities in places where regulation is the most lax. If the political structure has any spine and sense of ethics, it can agree with its neighbors to keep corporations under control.
As for countries outside the G20 which are still exploitable… well, unfortunately there’s not a lot that can be done against their will. Invasion doesn’t help. They’ll need time.