IMF

The International Monetary Fund’s policy advice impacts who becomes economic winners and losers. New Oxfam report finds the International Monetary Fund’s new ‘inequality pilots’ fail to support inequality reduction.

Last month Oxfam’s International Executive

Latin America is proof that the global trend of rising economic inequality can be reversed, if the political will exists. Despite historically being the most unequal region in the world, it is the only region that has managed to reduce inequality during the past decade.

By Winnie Byanyima and Sharan Burrow

Because of austerity, Europeans may have to live through the type of disastrous period experienced by Latin Americans, Asians and Africans in the 1980s and 1990s.

Europe's aggressive plans to balance the books by slashing public spending are proving to be a disaster. By ignoring mistakes from history, Europe risks repeating them. The most vulnerable people in Europe are facing an ‘austerity winter' that could last a generation.

It’s the time of year when Washington DC fills up with finance ministers, development ministers and central bank governors, all in town for a G20 meeting and for the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF. Oxfam is also here, lobbying for policies that benefit people living in poverty, and trying to keep attention on the most marginalized in the midst of fears about eurozone debt and US deficits.

This blog is part of a short series of Oxfam blogs on the role of international financial institutions, and the fight against poverty.

The IMF has quietly issued a surprising piece of research that speaks directly to who and what is to blame for the global economic crisis: that is, US politicians at the national level who loosened regulation of mortgage lenders and on the rest of the US financial sector.

This is the first of a short series of Oxfam blogs on the role of international financial institutions, and the fight against poverty.

Government tax collection in low-income countries stagnated throughout the 1990s and 2000s, according to a new paper by the Center for Development Policy at the University of London.

A big outcry from Oxfam supporters and others has helped convince the IMF to use some of its gold to help the poorest countries weather the storm of the economic crisis. They haven’t given as much as we asked – but thank you for ensuring that the poorest countries got some of these resources upfront.

I’m writing this from a windowless room in the IMF basement where our Oxfam team has been camped out for almost a week covering the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings. You can really lose your perspective down here, away from the sunlight and the bustling streets of Washington. So we keep reminding each other to get outside to enjoy a few minutes of spring sunshine every once in a while to stay grounded.