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Every time I tell someone that I am working on the history of Pakistan’s relationship with the IMF, there is one question that always comes up: “Is the IMF evil?”
There are many iterations of this question, but it always boils down to this: “They say once a country borrows from them,” said one particularly keen questioner, “that country can never repay the debt and remains in their clutches forever, is it true?”
I’m always struck by the level of fear and awe that the Fund commands in our popular imagination. It is run by the Jews, some say. It operates like a medieval money lender, it has usurious terms on its loans, nobody who falls in their clutches ever gets out. The better off try and connect it with some imperialist ambitions: it is a tool of US foreign policy, used to reward those who serve the imperial masters and punish those who disagree. It engineers the overthrow of governments and works in cahoots with the CIA, another told me rather insistently, brushing aside my questions that would cast doubt on the assertion.
