Weaken an economy until it’s cheap and easy to purchase labor-power and mining/farming rights

1. They want “assurances” that the government will have enough in the budget to repay the loan at some point, so that’s how they introduce them.

2. The loans will generate inflation, which will devalue the local currency, which means the loan’s value will decrease as well (this will happen because the value of interest rates paid back will decrease).

3. Furthermore, they are ideologically opposed to inflation and deficit spending (like all neolibs). They believe that these 2 factors are what destablizes economies, so they demand a government avoid them like the plague.

4. They believe that the economy does not rely on the proletariat’s economic activity (i.e. buying products and paying bills). They believe that the economy relies on the national loaning industry (i.e. the banks giving loans to people) and the rich people opening up businesses. They are very much adherents of “Reaganomics” or “trickle-down” economics. They think that inflation will damage the accumulated capitals of the rich and the banks, therefore, the economy will not be able to restart.

5. They want other measures to benefit the capitalist class, so they can help boost the economy (according to their ideology). A big portion of the loans is always allocated to banks, and the rest is either subsidizing corporations directly or indirectly. A certain amount may be used to restructure other existing loans of the government. A major concession they demand is to lower corporate and high-income taxes. Which means the government needs to cut the budget allocated for the benefit of the proletariat to account for the lost income. They usually suggest raising low-income taxes or invent new methods of taxation that targets low-income citizens (e.g. the employer portion of social security payments is decreased, and the employee portion is increased).

Essentially, IMF-imposed austerity means that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Which is just fine as far as the IMF is concerned, because that’s what they think makes for a better economy. In addition, a small class of super-rich people is easier to control and manipulate, and they in turn have an easier time influencing the government.

Look up “shock therapy”. That’s what the IMF believes in.

Personally I found Michael Hudson’s talks on “super-imperialism” and the role of the world bank as the most enlightening and eye-opening in this regard.

https://youtu.be/K9nbj4X556A?si=15pKFZdPEqScPwBB

The long story short is- they want countries to be insecure, to depend on the imperial cores- even if they may be “free” and “independent,” through IMF/World Bank/etc influence, the goal is to keep their economies permanently colonized.

(Sensible) protectionist policy and state-backed development has been the formula through which every industrialized and wealthy country has gotten to where they are now- with no meaningful exceptions. Without protecting domestic production and nurturing it so that it can survive the disruptions and hostile environment that is the “free market,” a country’s independence can be destroyed even without boots on the ground- through dependence on imports of food, medicines, technologies, etc.

Forcing a country’s markets open, while forcing austerity upon its citizenry, prevents domestic industrial subsidies/state development, agricultural subsidies, medical subsidies, and so-on. It provides a route through which international capital- imperialism, basically- can come in and destroy a nation’s natural self-sufficiency, flooding these countries with cheap goods to destroy domestic production, and then purchasing its land, labor, and infrastructure on the cheap once it has been left destitute. This applies to foodstuffs in particular, across the global south- in many parts of the world, countries are still enslaved to the same agricultural colonialism they have been for centuries- global capital usurps domestic production and focuses it on cash crops, while the nation at large is dependent on imports for their dietary staples, for instance. Effectively, at the flick of a switch the west can inflict famines upon these societies through sanctions. Through “temporary” austerity, they can inflict a permanent austerity on a society, wherein all wealth of resources, labor, and intellectual potential flows to the imperial core, and the colonized are effectively made barren and thus dependent.

I can go further into how China (and even Russia) differs from the “cheap goods” strategy of the west (specifically around how- unlike the west, they are actually collaborating with the rest of the world to collectively move up the value chain and thus destroy the “chain” altogether). But this is the gist of it.