"Decisions were made on the basis of what seemed a curious blend of ideology and bad economics, dogma that sometimes seemed to be thinly veiling special interests. When crises hit, the IMF prescribed outmoded, inappropriate . . . solutions, without considering the effects they would have on the people in the countries told to follow these policies. . . . Alternative opinions were not sought. Open, frank discussion was discouraged. . . . Ideology guided policy prescription and countries were expected to follow the IMF guidelines without debate. . . . Remedies failed as often, or even more often than they worked. . . . The policies designed to help a country adjust to crises . . . led to hunger and riots in many countries; and even when results were not so dire, even when they managed to eke out some growth, . . . often the benefits went disproportionately to the better-off, with those at the bottom sometimes facing even greater poverty."
"In the years since I first went there [to Ecuador -ed] in 1968, this tiny country had evolved into the quintessential victim of the corporatocracy. My contemporaries and I, and our modern corporate equivalents, had managed to bring it to virtual bankruptcy. We loaned it billions of dollars..."
"Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of my work. First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors. . .) so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources. . . ."