The Economic Plan for Iraq
Jeff Madrick reports on the economic blueprint for Iraq, here in the New York Times: "An Extreme Plan for Iraq" (This link will go dead before too long).
- "IRAQ'S new finance minister, Kamel al-Gailani, announced a sweeping liberalization of his country's economy at the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Dubai early last week. Amid the controversy over President Bush's request for $87 billion to finance the American presence in Iraq, the new laws hardly attracted attention in the United States.
"But by almost any mainstream economist's standard, the plan, already approved by L. Paul Bremer III, the American in charge of the Coalition Provisional Authority, is extreme — in fact, stunning. It would immediately make Iraq's economy one of the most open to trade and capital flows in the world, and put it among the lowest taxed in the world, rich or poor. Is this Middle Eastern nation, racked by war, ready for such severe experimentation? Moreover, the radical laws have been adopted without a democratic Iraqi government to discuss or approve them..."
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