NO PERMISSION FROM THE IMF FOR DIGITAL EXPANSION
Dr. Nurfer TERCAN
The Great Financial Reset: on 15 October 2020 the Head of the IMF Called for a “New Bretton Woods Moment”. We felt like saying, “Let us hope it is for the best,” but she had done the groundwork for this call in the best way on 3 June 2020, and had explained it point by point.
The Head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva. We came to know her better a few weeks ago in the advertising breaks of YouTube channels carrying certain news programmes.
She was trying to explain that the global economy was shuddering at the disastrous effects of central planning. She called for “a new Bretton Woods moment”. Georgieva spoke about the turning point on 15 October and stressed that today’s economic difficulties are the same as the difficulties the world faced at the end of the Second World War. Free-market advocates on social media and in forums, convincing people that the IMF Head’s latest Bretton Woods speech ought to arouse more suspicion, managed to convey, without any need for the 25th frame, that we too would sooner or later be persuaded.
Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva was trying to tell us, with the most forced smile she could manage, how we can build a more resilient, sustainable and inclusive world.
She must have been quite frightened during the pandemic, for we can tell how much good the warm embrace she wrote about on 3 June 2020 did her from the thanks she offered to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and to Professor Schwab, who had brought them together. And, addressing all those in authority, she issued her urgent call to duty in these words. “Now is the moment to think about what history will say about this crisis. And now is the time for all of us to define our own role.” And she went on…
She spoke of smarter growth. She did not neglect to give, months in advance, the warning that the digital economy is the biggest winner of this crisis, that is, a clue to her speech of 15 October 2020. But she also added, among her most compassionate words, that the widening of the digital divide would not be allowed, and that some countries and communities falling behind would in the future bring more pain than gain.
For this reason, she also stressed how important it is for institutions such as the IMF to support investments that will shrink the digital divide, working in partnership with the World Bank and others.
She also conveyed that careful thought needs to be given to how to make sure that the leap in growth and profitability in the digital sector leads to the benefit of societies. She continued her remarks with the importance of fairer growth.
Together with the warning that, if left to itself, this pandemic will deepen inequality, she as good as said: “This happened in previous pandemics too, so mind you! Do not be the Same Old You again and make our job harder.”
And, touching our hearts once more, she also gave the definition of how we can have a better world for all of us. “We can avoid this if we concentrate on investing in people, in the social fabric of our society, in access to opportunities, in education for all and in the expansion of social programmes, and thus on investing in the most vulnerable people,” she said.
With an example from the past, she paused her affectionate words until 15 October 2020.
She pointed to a report, from the middle of the Second World War, characterised by the recognition of interventions in the form of social welfare that could widen freedom by protecting the individual from the social evils that corrode individual existence. In the Beveridge Report of 1942 in England, the evils suffered by society that it had diagnosed were set out as the “five giants”. “The Five Giants”
These are: Want, Ignorance, Idleness, Squalor and Disease!
The reminder she underlined here: she pointed once again to the famous report in which William Beveridge, in 1942, set out how England should tackle what he called the five giant evils. She appears to have succeeded in drawing attention to the fact that this famous Beveridge Report was the best foundation on the road to becoming a better country after the war, including the establishment of the National Health Service, which is saving a great many lives in the United Kingdom today. FOR NOW!
From the beginning of 2020 to this date we have been writing constantly, saying, “it is exactly the right time to read; friends, please, it is exactly the right time to think”. We can now listen in good time to those who have found the field empty, and understand them in the best way by reading in history what lies behind what they do. If only we do not vanish in their shadows any more. We can wage our struggle on this path, and succeed, without dividing, without fragmenting, and without leaving it in the hands of those who say “The Five Giants”.
Keywords: IMF Kristalina Georgieva Bretton Woods
Translated from the Turkish original.