I am now working in Kyoto again and have a full day’s commitments ahead of me. But as part of my on-going research I have been investigating the conditions under which the IMF extends financial support to the poorest nations. And today I will tell you about the surcharge system which the IMF uses to make it even harder for those nations to repay the already onerous debt obligations that the IMF imposes on them. These surcharges are just another component of the IMF’s extraction system which transfers wealth from the poorest nations to the richest. I have long advocated the abolition of the IMF and a replacement, multilateral institution being created that actually works to help reduce poverty and the redistribute resources from endowed to less-endowed nations without any harsh austerity measures. The challenge is how would that work. I will write more about my ideas on that in due course. But the evidence keeps mounting to justify the abolition. The surcharge system is one part of that evidence suite.