IMF and Strauss-Kahn – The Sickness Within

The IMF has been an instrument of rape and pillage of nations. Not surprisingly, this was also reflected in the internal culture there – women were afraid to wear skirts and forced into relationship with their bosses.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's (DSK) fall from grace – he has now been indicted of attempted rape, oral rape and criminal confinement of a 32-year old housemaid from Guinea in Hotel Sofitel – has brought into open not only his own predatory past but also the prevailing culture within IMF. The French elite have been shocked – not at the charges against Strauss-Kahn – but by his being handcuffed and being forced to undergo 'perp walk' in a New York court. Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher went further to suggest that the charges could not be true as apparently New York hotels always sent two maids -- a figment of his imagination -- for cleaning rooms. Ben Stein, Nixon's speech writer claimed that Strauss-Kahn was too old to rape, even though not too old to seduce. The sheer stupidity of such defence would not be surprising if not for their past defences. Bernard-Henri Levy remains a passionate defender of Israel including its brutal siege of Gaza. He has also defended his friend Roman Polanski accused of child abuse. For Ben Stein, Nixon's speech writer, that fact is enough to dismiss his defence.

The culture  within IMF is now becoming clear as is Strauss-Kahn's predatory past. The married Hungarian economist Piroska Nagy had stated in the internal enquiry on her 'affair' with -Strauss-Kahn  that she had felt pressured into the affair by his constant pursuit. The Committee rapped Kahn mildly on the knuckles for 'bad judgment' but not for sexual harassment, sidestepping the charges that Nagy had made. Tristan Banon, (a journalist and the daughter of a senior fellow Socialist party leader, Anne Mansouret, had earlier charged Kahn on TV with sexual assault and is now considering filing criminal charges.Commenting on the Strauss Kahn affair, Kate Pollit says in The Nation,

Suddenly, it’s common knowledge that women journalists and IMF staffers took care not to be alone with him. But of course DSK’s predatory behavior was always common knowledge, the stuff of jokes, gossip and veiled allusions in the press..It took a powerless outsider in a foreign country—the housekeeper had no idea that DSK, as one of the world’s most powerful men, was entitled to make violent use of her body—to take action.

The women in IMF were afraid to wear skirts and had to be always on guard against predatory bosses. IMF had an unusual provision that allowed managers to pursue the women who worked for them, “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.” Incidentally, one of the front-runners for the IMF job, the Turkish economist Kemal Dervis, while working at the World Bank years ago, had a 'relationship' with a subordinate who now works at the IMF.

Why did IMF have such a culture of predatory sexual behaviour? Is it the sense of power of lording it over third world economies – a master of the universe syndrome? If you were allowed to impose conditions which completely impoverished these economies and presided over the forced transfer of their resources to global corporations, did it also puff up your male ego in believing that the whole world was there for your taking? Did predatory sexual behaviour have anything in common with the loot and plunder of the third world economy that IMF presided over?

Interestingly enough, there appears to be some basis to the comparison that people are making of IMF's macho economics and the sexual predation within IMF. Enron had exactly the same kind of image in the business world – they were a bunch of thugs that were interested in loot and pillage in different parts of the world. Theirs was the culture of macho business – a kind of 20th century pirate capitalism if you will. Not surprisingly, so was the culture within Enron – of predatory sexual behaviour. Power is the most powerful aphrodisiac known. IMF and such institutions provide power without accountability. No wonder the Strauss Kahns of the world believe they are above law. The sickness of IMF is that while sexual predation may now be curbed, the rape of the third world will continue. It is only a global public opinion that can change such policies and stop the pillage of the global south.

photograph courtesy: flickr.com