236 THE BiG DROP
countries in both the developed world and among the poorest.
Importantly, the book is highly accessible. Ahamed avoids
the arcane jargon that fills most accounts of the IMF as well
as the IMF’s official publications and reports. Anyone with the
slightest interest in the workings of the international monetary
system will find this book an excellent guide to how the IMF
goes about its business on a day-to-day basis, and how the IMF
has the power to make or break sovereign governments by de-
ciding whether or not to make loans when those governments
are in financial distress.
One of the book’s main takeaways is the demonstration
that the IMF is just as powerful as the military and CIA when
it comes to forcing regime change in governments that do not
follow U.S. orders. Of course, the IMF does this without firing
a shot. They use money as a weapon just as effectively as the
military uses special operations or the CIA uses drones.
Second, if Western nations lose votes in the IMF and those
votes are given to communist China — as is currently planned
— then the IMF money weapons may be aimed at the U.S. in
the future.
In recent decades, the emerging markets and southern
Europe have needed IMF bailouts. In the future, the U.S. may
be the one that needs to be bailed out, and we may have to
accept conditions imposed by China or the BRICS using the
IMF as their monetary agent.
The book is also timely. While the IMF has always been
opaque, its importance to global finance has waxed and waned
over the decades. Now the IMF is about to enter its most pow-
erful stage yet. Central banks bailed out the world in 2008.
The next financial panic will be bigger than the ability of cen-
tral banks to put out the fire. At that point, the only source of
global liquidity will be the IMF itself.
The issuance of 5 trillion of SDRs, equal to $7.5 trillion,
to paper over the next financial panic will be highly inflation-