Though I have lost nothing, because I was too cowardly to get back into stocks after 9/11, there are many, many, retired people who depend almost entirely on their stocks to supplement their pensions, social security, etc.  Some cannot put their stocks in conservative investments because these days that does not bring near enough income to survive on either. There is no type of investments that produce anything much at all.  They are living on the edge, and now the edge just fell off.  What is going to become of them?  How will they make it through the rest of the year?  That is a very scary thing for any of us to imagine, and they are probably the least able to do something about it.

so her kids are currently lacking health insurance. I asked if she could get them on HAWK-I (which is the Iowa SCHIP program), and she had already called about that. They are eligible but can't be added in the middle of the month.

So she and her husband are just praying that the kids don't develop any medical problems before November 1.

They looked into a private health insurance plan, but because their son needed a nebulizer for some cold more than a year ago, he wouldn't have been covered for any respiratory illness for four years.

Thank you for a wonderful post.  Yes, we in India (and other developing countries) have a strong distrust of the IMF, and hope that we won't get pushed so strongly on "free markets".

But the bad news is that we have already adopted most or all of those policies ("liberalization" is the term in India), and while it has increased the GDP (because we were at the right point in the developmental curve for it), it is greatly increasing the have / have-not divide.  Lots of productive people (farmers, weavers) starving.

We all desperately need a 21st century economic system - something beyond capitalism and communism.  One that is centred around community well-being and self-sufficiency, with trade and mass production as means towards that goal, rather than as means towards "maximum GDP".

Yes, well. It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it, so I will make a partial defense of the IMF prescriptions. I have lived for months at a time in Ghana for five years now, so I have seen some of the other side.

Privatized utilities vs. public utilities. The recent record, one example or three. According the standard statistics, Ghana had about 300,000 telephone lines in 2000, landlines operated by Ghana Telecom, a govt-owned entity. But the donor nations insisted that the cell phone market had to be open to competition. When I first visited the country in 2003, making a call home was an ordeal. Citizens stood in lines to use the pay phones outside the public buildings, especially the headquarters of Ghana Telecom. Sometimes the pay phones worked, other times not. In 2004 my guide and friend was begging me to guy him a cell phone, which I did, and he signed up with a private cell phone operator. He got a six digit number. In 2005 his number got a 4 added to it, changing it to a seven digit number BECAUSE that cell phone operator (one of four competing in the market) had about used up the 999,999 numbers possible with six digits combined. By 2008 Ghana had over 8 million cell phone customers. Rusting arrays of pay phones were being removed; no one uses them any more. And Ghana Telecom had increased the number of landline customers to more than 400,000.

The privately owned cell phone companies, BTW, apparently are based in South Africa and the Middle East. Only this year were the big European telecoms being invited to bid to take over Ghana's mess of a landline operating company.

Ghana Electric. In 2007 the capital city enjoyed rolling blackouts, that the citizens called Lights OFF! Accounts in the papers alleged that the looming shortage of electric power had little to do with the officially blamed shortage of rain and therefore hydroelectric supply, and more to the surging demand for juice to power the demand of users adding every more appliances (including cell phone chargers ha ha ha) to the daily demand. But the govt owned power company had not rushed to install new generating capacity to mass produce more electric power, constrained by the govt budget and concerns about potentially growing imports of fuel oil. Instead, the affluent rushed to buy their own home generators to run their wiring in their houses and businesses, polluting the air while importing diesel fuel instead of fuel oil.

Ghana Airways, now Ghana International, largely govt-owned, with a handful of planes and routes, and a lousy reputation. To keep their planes full and losses low, the government restricts competition from foreign airlines which enjoy the advantages like worldwide routes and computerized operations right down to frequent-flyer plans. But for example, Ghana International flies 7 times a week to the US, so American flag carriers (Delta and an outfit called North American Air) can only fly 7 times a week. Their planes are also full. Full like 100% capacity, and priced to what the traffic will bear. Ticket prices to fly NYC-Accra are about the same as ticket NYC-South Africa, thousands of miles farther to fly.

Earlier this year the government spent millions hosting an all-Africa soccer championship, new stadiums, etc. The official line was that the country would benefit from additional tourists as a result of this attraction. Yeah, maybe lots of tourists drove over from Nigeria, a hundred miles away or so. But no additional tourists arrived by air. The planes are always full -- yes, even those of Ghana International. So they were full in the month before the tournament and full the month after the tournament, and no foreign airlines were allowed to increase their number of flights from the US or Europe.

And a more general point: Corruption seems endemic to modern African governments, and socialism corrupts them absolutely. To get a good job with one of the govt owned utilities, you don't need a college degree, much less any competence, you only need a relative in the parliament, in the ruling party controlling parliament, that is.

I don't think the IMF always solves the problems, but I know that the East German model of state  ownership still admired in Ghana never solves the problems.