If the goal of the International Monetary Fund is to help poor countries achieve self-sustaining growth, then the fund has been a flop, experts agree. It has been engaged in a cycle of rendering poor advice to its client countries, watching recipients of its largess get in deeper economic trouble, sending them more billions aimed at digging them out of their difficulties -- and then forwarding the bill to taxpayers, particularly those in the U.S.

• Nearly 90 nations have been recipients of IMF money for at least a decade.

• The fund brags that in many instances its programs "have accommodated such non-market devices as production controls, administered prices and subsidies."

• If IMF policies have been on the right track, critics ask, why are such fund clients as Brazil, Indonesia and Russia in such a mess today?

• For example, during the period 1992 to 1996 -- while Russia avoided creating a market economy -- the IMF sent it $20 billion, following that up with the latest bailout of $22.6 billion.

Critics say the fund survives because of the support of U.S. business interests -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, Citicorp and Morgan Stanley -- which like the promise of the eventual bailout of countries in which they have investments.

Source: Doug Bandow (Cato Institute), "Endless Aid, Endless Bailouts," Washington Times, October 16, 1998.