the shortcomings of corporeal bodies

This is a snippet of Eric Toussaint's latest piece over at counterpunch -

"The response of the US and European political and financial authorities to the liquidity crisis which began in August 2007 is a far cry from the response imposed on the Indonesian authorities by the IMF, supported by these same governments, at the time of the Asian crisis of 1997-1998. In the first case, the US and European authorities saved the banks by placing liquidities at their disposal, whereas in Indonesia, the IMF enforced bankruptcy on dozens of banks by refusing to let either the Indonesian Central Bank or the IMF itself lend them liquidities. This ended in a social disaster and a huge increase in the internal public debt because the debts of the failed private banks were transferred to the Indonesian State. Another glaring difference: to stem the crisis, the US monetary authorities have since August 2007 lowered interest rates (as they did between 2001 and May 2004), whereas the IMF demanded that the Indonesian government increase interest rates, a factor which considerably aggravated the crisis. Double standards for the North and South."

So much for sovereignty. Who owns and controls the Indonesian Central Bank? Not the Indonesians obviously. Who owns and controls the IMF? Seriously. I'd love to know. We seemed to be able to figure out who did what in the Enron scam (allegedly the biggest in history, ha ha) but on the subject of banking these questions are never asked. Somehow it's a force of nature, an agenda-less thing from nowhere, a variation of an act of god. But as sure as eggs is eggs there are people responsible for this. They have names and, in spite of their hubristic delusion, corporeal bodies. Their bodies, just like those guilty of infinitely lesser crimes, are perfectly capable of dangling from a lamp-post or being put on a hook in a butcher's shop window.