policies are being imposed by an international agency that is perceived by
those of the dependence school to be merely an arm of the rich industrialized
nations, stabilization policies are often viewed by this school as measures
designed primarily to maintain the poverty and dependence of developing
countries while preserving the global market structure for the international
banks and private investors (and speculators) from the industrialized nations.
For example, in an extensive dependence critique of the IMF and its
stabilization programs, Cheryl Payer has argued that the IMF functions
within a developed-world dominated global trading system “as the chosen
instrument for imposing imperialist financial discipline upon poor countries”
and thus creates a form of “international peonage” in which balance of
payments problems are perpetuated rather than resolved. Payer further argues
that the IMF encourages developing countries to incur additional debt
from international financial institutions while it “blackmails” them (through
threats of loan rejection) into antidevelopmental stabilization programs. This
added debt burden thus becomes a source of future balance of payments
problems, setting up a vicious circle in which debtor nations have to run
faster merely to stay in place.