The 2025 IMF & World Bank Spring Meetings showed the system is broken. Our movements are fighting back ā stronger, louder, unstoppable.
1. Bretton Woods is Broken: People Demand Justice, Not Austerity
As the 2025 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings conclude, one thing was clear: despite mounting crises, the Bretton Woods Institutions are still clinging to austerity. Under pressure from the USās hardline āAmerica Firstā stance, the Fund and Bank doubled down on failed orthodoxies ā austerity, private finance, and political caution ā while sidelining the twin emergencies of debt and climate.
This week's gathering in Washington DC for the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF should be a wake for a dying global economic architecture, but unfortunately, a New International Economic Order cannot be born without African leadership to reposition the continent and the rest of the Global South away from the bottom of the global value chain. This is what I told the BBC Newsday on Monday. Click the image below to listen to the full interview.
At a critical side event during the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings, a broad coalition of labor leaders and civil society organizations gathered to examine the growing disconnect between the IMFās rhetoric on social spending and the realities of its austerity-driven programs.
Co-organized by the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors, Global Social Justice, MENA Fem Movement, Human Rights Watch, Arab Reform Initiative, Akina Mama wa Afrika, and other key groups, the sessionāAusterity vs. Protection: Laborās Perspective on the IMFās Contradictory Social Spending Approachāhighlighted the findings of a new ITUC study on the implementation of the IMFās 2019 social spending strategy.
The discussion revealed that despite policy commitments to social protection, IMF programs continue to prioritize fiscal consolidation, often at the expense of essential public services and workersā rights. Rather than reducing inequality, these measures have exacerbated social and economic divides.
In a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, conflicts, genocides, systemic injustice, and ecological collapse, the call for global solidarity has never been more urgent. Sometimes, we feel overwhelmed, paralyzed, and stuck in a rot of despair and inaction. Instead of writing another analytical piece, I decided to rewrite this older poem hoping to inspire all of us to find some hope and courage, and to trigger the urge to act. I also asked one of my mentors, Rajani Kanth, who, unlike me, is a real poet and one of the best political economists I’ve ever known, to smooth out some rough edges in my writing. I’m always grateful for his thoughtful input. You should all follow and read his work here. Poetry is healing for the soul. And music adds some fun to it, which I did with the help of AI here. I hope you enjoy it.
I’m often asked whether BRICS is going to be the game-changer that will disrupt the current geopolitical hierarchy, dedollarize the system, and create a new multipolar word. My position has always been that we can’t dedollarize a system that hasn’t been structurally decolonized yet, and that no new multipolar world can be born without Africa and the rest of the Global South being repositioned away from the bottom of the global hierarchy and at the center of a New International Economic Order. I explained this on CGTN Africa recently when we discussed the outcomes of the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia (read the Kazan Declaration). The gist of my argument is in this 2-minute clip below, but you can watch the full interview here.
We spent the last two weeks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan at what was supposed to be The Climate Finance COP, but the United States and the rest of the Global North showed up empty handed with an intentional agenda of delaying, denying, distracting, blaming the victims, and greenwashing economic traps. In the end, COP29 was not about climate, it was about an economic and geopolitical hierarchy that is not supposed to be disturbed. Why? Because real climate action would imply that climate finance is development finance. Real climate action means high quality transformative climate finance in the form of grants (not loans), cancellation of all climate-related debts (not rescheduling), and the sharing/transfer of life-saving technologies to allow the Global South to manufacture and deploy the building blocks of climate resilience and adaptation; and that would unleash the full potential of the Global South as an economic powerhouse that is no longer locked at the bottom of the economic and geopolitical hierarchy (as outlined in our Just Transition report). And that potential is perceived by the Global North as a threat to be managed and eliminated, not as an opportunity for development and climate action.
This (long) post will encompass some brief comments and updates from my recent work, and will be followed by more detailed notes in the next few weeks. First, I spent the last few days in Shanghai, China lecturing at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai (July 8-23). The program is aimed for Ph.D. students, post-docs, and early career professionals who are entering academia and public policy government positions. This year’s theme is “Public Indebtedness and the Future of Human Development.” I spent close to six hours (split over two days) presenting “Global South Debt & Development: A Strategic Repositioning in a Multipolar World of Peace & Sustainable Prosperity,” and engaging in the most thoughtful discussions with 120 of the sharpest young minds in China. The future of the Global South is brighter. I will write more about this soon. Next, I will briefly highlight some recent events in Nairobi, Tegucigalpa, Tunis, and Havana.
Greetings from the belly of the beast! I’ve been in Washington DC over the last few days attending the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund the World Bank Group. Six months after the IMF-WBG meetings in Marrakesh, we are still struggling to get the conversation focused on what it takes to truly transform the international financial architecture and to decolonize the global economic system. Let me share a few reflections here.
I’m on my way back to Nairobi. I spent the last 3 days in Rome at a UN expert group meeting on SDG2 (Ending Hunger) at the FAO, in preparation for the 2024 High-Level Political Forum that will be held in July 2024. It was a bit ironic that the FAO building where we held the meeting used to be the Italian Ministry of the Colonies under the Mussolini regime, and my main message to the FAO was about decolonizing the global economic architecture is a prerequisite for achieving the SDGs, including SDG2 to end hunger. It is 2024, and the global food system reflects the legacy of colonial and post-colonial hierarchies. This blog is a brief summary of my main message to the FAO. I have also co-authored a recent piece about SDG5 (gender equality).
I spent the week in Bogota, Colombia for a series of presentations and meetings with Colombian government senior officials in the ministry of finance, the ministry of mines and energy, as well as senior diplomats. I also had a chance to meet with several academics, think tanks, and civil society organizations. It’s been a very productive and inspiring week. Today I wanted to comment briefly on the EU-Egypt “partnership” and on the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial meeting, which will set the stage for COP29, now dubbed the Climate Finance COP. Will it deliver? Or will it be the COP where climate finance goes to die?
It’s been a busy month. I have a few longer blogs that I post soon (preview below) but I wanted to share some quick updates and some resources that I think will be helpful. I spent the last few days in Tunis. I’ll post the updates in reverse chronological order. Yesterday, I did an. interview (in Arabic) with Radio SonFM on a show cleverly called Sans Emissions (Without Emissions, but also a play on words to say Sound Show). The full show is available here. We discussed green colonialism in the Global South, the Mattei Plan, the Non-Aligned Movement and G77+China South Summit in Kampala, fossil fuel economic entrapment, the so-called green industrialization of Namibia (new blog on this coming up soon), and most importantly, I discussed what I call the Bargain of the Century for the Global South, which I will write about soon.
The World Social Forum in Nepal is an Open Space of social movements, NGOs, civil society organisations, trade unions, citizens who demand that āAnother World is Possibleā. We believe that ending austerity is central to the aims of this assembly gathered in Kathmandu 15-19 February, and this is why we call for immediate attention to the crisis of austerity that is only getting worse, and demand for immediate action on many alternatives that exist to austerity.
Today, more than 6 billion people are suffering from austerity, so-called āfiscal consolidationā according to a recent study by the EndAusterity Campaign. We demand that governments immediately stop harmful public budget cuts in essential areas like education, health and social protection, and halt damaging reforms such as the privatization of public services and social security rights, which are exacerbating gender inequality, as women are the shock absorbers due to the subsidy they provide to the global economy through their unpaid domestic and care work. Instead of austerity cuts/reforms, governments must seek new sources of fiscal space to meet their Human Rights obligations and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Specifically, we, the undersigned social movements, civil society organisations, trade unions and academics demand that governments, regional organisations and multilateral organisations urgently:
African football fans enjoyed some amazing football matches over the last few weeks. We celebrated our football superstars and our favorite teams during the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON). However, a tournament that was moved to 2024 because of the climate-induced unfavorable and sometimes disastrous weather conditions that affect West Africa during the tropical rain season. And to add insult to injury, our AFCON has been hijacked by TotalEnergies as a platform to sportswash and greenwash its extraction, pollution, and abuse of the African continent. Decolonizing African football is just as important as decolonizing our economy, education, and just about every aspect of our lives. Ultimately, of course, we are talking about Decolonizing the Mind.
I am troubled by the number of African presidents, prime ministers, and senior officials who skipped the G77+China South Summit in Kampala last week, but flocked to Rome this week when they were summoned by the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni to attend the Italy-Africa Summit to be presented with the Mattei Plan for Africa. Since African leaders don’t have a plan for Africa, we will continue to be part of someone else’s plans, be it Europe, the US, China, or the G7 (which Italy is presiding this year). It is 2024, so colonial plans come dressed up in PR-proof rhetoric with partnership slogans like “not predatory, not paternalistic, but not charitable either.” That is how Meloni described Italy’s “vision of development in Africa.”
This week Uganda is not only the Pearl of Africa, but also the symbolic capital of the Global South. Uganda is hosting the 19th Non-Aligned Movement Summit (Jan 15-20) and the G77+China Third South Summit (Jan 21-23) at Speke Resort & Convention Center Munyonyo. I have written about Uganda’s leadership role in the Global South during after my last visit to Kampala back in November in preparation for the South Summit. Coincidentally (or not), while Global South countries gathered to discuss South-South cooperation and how to face the challenges of debt, development and climate change, others turned their attention to Davos, Switzerland where global business elites summoned government officials and leaders of global financial institutions to influence global economic thinking in a way that serves and protects their interest, while pretending to care about inequality, poverty, and climate change.
At the 2024 World Social Forum in Kathmandu, the End Austerity Campaign hosted a powerful session addressing the harmful social consequences of austerity measuresāparticularly their disproportionate impact on women.
The session featured high-level speakers, including the Executive Directors of Oxfam, Financial Transparency International, and Global Social Justice, among others. Discussions focused on the urgent need to move away from austerity-driven policies and emphasized the wide range of financing alternatives available to governments that can lead to socially just and sustainable development outcomes.
The event culminated in the launch of the Kathmandu Statement to End Austerity, a bold declaration signed by participants, reinforcing the global call for economic policies rooted in equity and human rights.
The fact that it took 28 COPs to finally name fossil fuels as the root cause of climate change is sobering. And the fact the we ended up with the weakest possible language of "transitioning away from fossil fuels" while most rich countries plan to spend billions of dollars building new fossil fuel infrastructure, and avoiding the responsibility to finance a just transition for developing countries is the ultimate demonstration of Global North hypocrisy. The major loophole one can sail an LNG carrier through is the language around "unabated" fossil fuels, which relies on unproven and expensive technologies of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) that are designed to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
Climate finance requires a minimum of $2.4 trillion of transformative grant-based investment and transfer of technology for climate adaptation and mitigation by 2030. We are nowhere near that target at the end of COP28. Climate finance is a climate debt owed by the historic polluters of the Global North to Global South countries that are on the front lines of climate change. The Global North is in default and is refusing to pay its debt.
I’m getting ready to go to COP28 in Dubai, UAE in a few hours. And, of course, I have two things on my mind: phasing out fossil fuels and transformative climate finance. Let’s start with fossil fuels. I was thrilled to see that yesterday (December 2), President Gustavo Petro announced that Colombia would formally join the bloc of nation-states seeking to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Colombia is now the 10th country to call for an international treaty to phase out fossil fuels with a comprehensive just transition framework. This is historic because Colombia is the first major fossil fuel exporter to endorse the Treaty initiative.
It’s almost the end of November but it feels like summer. I was tempted to go to the beach, but I was too busy, unfortunately. The drought is still in full effect. No rain yet. Water levels in the major dams are below 30% of capacity. Water cuts are not uncommon in the evening in major coastal cities, and unfortunately, the interior towns often experience water shortages for weeks at a time, not to mention farmers who struggles to get any access to irrigation in recent years. And yet, Tunisia has major plans to produce water-intensive green hydrogen to export to Europe!
I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately to comment on climate finance and what to expect from the upcoming COP28 meeting in Dubai. I will share some thoughts here and link to some sources and recent interviews/comments I have made.
Greetings from Quito, Ecuador, the Center of the World!
I am here with a small group of colleagues from across the Global South for a workshop on debt and development. It was the beginning of an amazing collaborative effort that will unfold over the next few months (more on this in due course). And it was a wonderful opportunity to visit the Mitad del Mundo (the Middle of the World) at the 0 latitude point on the equator (which pre-Incas native people have identified with GPS-like accuracy and marked it on Mount Katequilla, which means he who follows the moon), where we took turn finding our perfect balance (balancing that egg!) and enjoying samples of the best Ecuadorian chocolate and coffee.
Today, I had a very productive visit to Kampala, Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, with my dear friend Julius Mucunguzi (we were colleagues in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). I had two long deep-dive conversations with senior government officials, Minister of State for Industry, the Hon David Bahati, and Uganda's Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Ambassador Aadonia Ayebare.
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October 13, 2023 | Side Event at the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings, Marrakech
At a high-level side event during the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Marrakech, the End Austerity Campaign, together with the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors and the Campaign for the Right to Social Security, convened a timely discussion on the urgent need to rethink social protection in the context of debt and austerity.
Drawing on recent research, the session revealed that IMF-mandated social spending floors often fail to counteract the broader harm caused by austerity-driven policy conditionalities. Rather than mitigating inequality, these measures tend to entrench it further.
Panelists called for a transformative shift in how the IMF and World Bank approach social policyāmoving beyond narrow safety nets to frameworks that embed human rights and social justice at their core. The discussion championed the creation of a new eco-social contract, one that links economic policies with environmental sustainability and universal social protection.
At the Reclaim Our Future Conference in Marrakech, the End Austerity Campaign hosted a compelling session exposing the global rise of a new wave of austerity policiesācurrently impacting more than 6 billion people worldwide.
The session addressed urgent questions:
What are these new austerity measures?
Where are they being implemented?
What is the human cost of these policies?
And what feasible alternatives can governments adopt instead?
Drawing on powerful evidence and key findings from recent reports by campaign membersāincluding ActionAid International, the Financial Transparency Coalition, Human Rights Watch, OXFAM, Global Social Justice, and numerous other civil society organizationsāthe session highlighted how austerity undermines fundamental rights such as education, healthcare, and social protection.
Speakers called for immediate action to reverse harmful economic policies and to adopt rights-based, equitable alternatives that put people and planet first.
330 major civil society organizations and senior academics from around the world have signed a declaration calling on the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and governments to end austerity measures, ahead of the IMF-WB Annual Meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, on 9-15 October.
Today, 6 billion people are living under austerity around the world, resulting in harmful cuts in public services and social protection amid a cost-of-living crisis. These IMF and World Bank-promoted austerity policies are being implemented in the name of āfiscal consolidationā as countries struggle to pay their debts.
We, civil society representatives and academics from all over the world, call upon governments, Ministries of Finance and International Financial Institutions to end austerity.
Today, more than 6 billion people are suffering from austerity, so-called āfiscal consolidationā, amid a cost-of-living crisis. We demand that governments immediately stop harmful public budget cuts in essential areas like education, health and social protection, and halt damaging reforms such as the privatization of public services and social security rights, which are exacerbating gender inequality, as women are the shock absorbers due to the subsidy they provide to the global economy through their unpaid domestic and care work. Instead of austerity cuts/reforms, governments must seek new sources of fiscal space to meet their Human Rights obligations and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Specifically, we, the undersigned civil society organizations, trade unions and academics demand that governments, Ministries of Finance, the IMF, World Bank and other International Financial Institutions urgently:
Date: Saturday, 7 October, 9am-6:30pm (Marrakesh time), 8am-5:30pm UTC Venue: Cadi Ayyad University Club Marrakesh & online Register to attend: https://forms.gle/zADLVqmp2RfXX7gX8
Join us for a full day hybrid event on October 7th 2023 in Marrakesh!
To kick off the World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings, we will come together to celebrate resistance against their failed economic model that puts profit before people and planet, and join forces in calling for a feminist, green and care-led agenda for the future!
The EndAusterity Campaign invites campaign members and allies, existing and new ones, to join the Festival to share their advocacy know-how and research, speak to their experience and lived realities in their communities, and inspire advocacy, action and art.
The American Mindās āEditorial Roundtableā podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.
Despite the need to reduce absoluteĀ greenhouse gas emissions in line with climate science, the government continues to promote carbon offsetting and certify claims of “carbon neutrality” by the fossil fuel industry and other big emitters through itsĀ Climate ActiveĀ scheme.
The Australia Institute has previously filed a complaint with the ACCC on the basis that Climate Active may be misleading and deceptive under consumer law.
The Australia Instituteās 2024 Climate of the Nation showed that there is widespread confusion around carbon offsets and carbon neutrality, and that the government should be responsible for verifying claims by industry:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I’m Joe Cortright with City Observatory.
As you remember I testified six weeks ago, when I pointed out that faced with cost overruns, what this commission has done is frown, shrug, and then give the same people more money to do more of the same. And I noted that you get the behavior that you reward, and what you’ve been rewarding is low-balling cost estimates, overestimating revenue and minimizing or ignoring risks, and we’re seeing that happening in real time today.
On your agenda, I’ll just draw your attention to Item K, which deals with the Interstate Bridge Project. If you’ll notice, you don’t have an estimate of how much this project will cost, and you’re being told that Ā you’re just approving a $2 billion STIP allocation, but what you’re really doing is signing a blank check for whatever this project ends up costing.
This Strong Towns member-submitted article was originally published in the Institute of Transportation Engineersā Florida-Puerto Rico Division newsletter. It is shared here with permission. In-line photos were provided by the writer.
In the past week or so, more precise contours have emerged in the legal contests over the lawfulness of the Trump regime's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and the mechanics of the regime's deportation Venezuelans to CECOT, a prison camp in El Salvador. One way or another these fights will culminate in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Three issues have gained prominence:
whether detained Venezuelans may have their habeas petitions handled via class action
whether the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) permits Trump to declare Tren de Aragua (TdA) a foreign invasionary force
what steps constitute due process for removal of alleged TdA members under the AEA
Courts have already taken positions on each of these, clearly splitting over the first two and just beginning to address the third. While I have firm views as to the proper legal answers to questions (1) and (2), the fact and ways that federal district courts are disagreeing over them highlights that the Supreme Court might side with the arguments I reject. My purpose in this post is to give a deeper sense of the issues and to sketch the positions courts have taken thus far.
I wrote about Proust once before. It was over a year ago, in February 2024, and I must have been midway through book 2 of Proust’s 7-volume epic In Search of Lost Time, also translated as Remembrance of Things Past. Now, I’m nearing the end of Volume 7, the last in the series. The final volumes have been a particular struggle to get through, as my health declined precipitously since the summer, leaving me homebound and mostly bedbound. I lost days and weeks to severe migraines, trying to relax beneath a silk eye mask beneath an icy cold cap direct from the freezer.
Eventually, I swallowed my pride and began listening to books on tape, something I discussed in this essay about learning to accept my need for mobility and accessibility aids. But by this time, my relationship with my gorgeous Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition novels was personal and emotional; I was fixated on finishing them the old-fashioned way. Slowly and steadily, I crawled through books five and six. I knew that, like me, Proust had been chronically ill, and I knew that, like me, he had been getting sicker as time went on.
I joked that reading the books while getting sicker, knowing that Proust was writing the semi-autobiographical books while getting sicker, made me feel like I was living in some warped Charlie Kaufman screenplay.
On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, host Chris Hedges speaks with Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Frontlines Battling Abusive Governments. Hedges and Roth discuss HRW’s work and how it has changed over time, from its Cold War origins to the social media age.
Sir Winston Churchill is known to have remarked that āIn wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.ā That timeless mindset of deception has proven effective at enabling militaries to surprise adversaries on the battlefield throughout the history of human warfare. But when such tactics carry over into how the military communicates with citizens, ethical lines have clearly been crossed. This undermines the military officerās oath of office and sows distrust among the public that the military is supposed to serve. Such a case is presently before us.
A recent report in the New York Times revealed that the pilot of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter that knocked American Airlines flight 5342 from the sky in January made several errors. The pilot ignored a warning to change direction and collided with the plane, killing everyone on both aircraft. This information was not released by the U.S. Army nor the Department of Defense, even though the official policy of both is maximum disclosure, minimum delay. But in this and countless other cases, the militaryās actions are hostile to official DoD policies.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Stephen Long, Walkley Award-winning journalist and Australia Institute Contributing Editor, joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the Murdoch press bogeyman, supporting the public broadcasters and the prospects for major, progressive reforms in the second Albanese term.
This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 13 May 2025 and things may have changed.
Order āAfter America: Australia and the new world orderā or become a foundation subscriber to our Vantage Point series and save 25% on the Australia Institute website.
Guest: Stephen Long, Senior Fellow and Contributing Editor, the Australia Institute // @stephenlongaus
Host: Ebony Bennet, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett
I have ended up taking a lot longer to write up my biggest picture thoughts on the dollar than I initially expected. Partially this is because things seem to have stabilized- for now- and thus I didn’t feel the pressure to rush a piece out. Just yesterday China and the United States announced a tariff agreement- at least for the next ninety days. But the other reason I haven’t put out a big picture piece on the dollar is I have struggled to put all my thoughts on this topic into one piece. Before the coronavirus pandemic- when I was in a very different place in my life- my goal was to go off to undertake a PhD in law in Europe where I would write a three chapter dissertation on the international law of money. My June 2018 talk which I published in the newsletter last month provides the rough skeleton of my thinking. How do you get all of that into one piece?
The 55 groups congratulate the Prime Minister on his resounding election victory, which they say has delivered a mandate for āoptimistic and ambitiousā action on climate change.
The letter ā published in several newspapers today – points out that, as well as being an existential threat, climate change has intensified the cost-of-living crisis, pushing up energy, grocery and insurance prices.
The signatories call upon the re-elected Albanese government to commit to a fast and fair phase-out of fossil fuels, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime for the Prime Minister,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.
“Anthony Albanese can be a leader who finally brings an end to Australia’s destructive fossil fuel addiction, while – at the same time – helping Australians through a cost-of-living crisis.
āThe first and most important thing he can do right now is to stop the biggest, most destructive, most unnecessary fossil fuel project in the country: the expansion of the North West Shelf gas export terminal.
āThis project would release more than four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
āIt would also allow the ongoing destruction of one of Australia’s and the worldās greatest cultural treasures ā the 40,000-year-old Murujuga rock engravings. These are eight times older than the pyramids and are being ruined by acid gas emissions from the adjacent gas plant.
Kenin Spivakās response to my piece, āStriking Iran Would Be a Mistake,ā reflects a familiar but strategically short-sighted instinct within American foreign policy: the belief that forceful action against a dangerous regime, if justified morally or militarily, must also be wise geopolitically. But as I argued, and will expand upon here, the deeper question confronting the United States is not merely whether Iran goes nuclear, but whether the geopolitical structure of Eurasia becomes locked into a sinocentric configurationāone that fuses Iranian energy, Russian military-industrial depth, and Chinese strategic coordination into a single bloc capable of overturning the Western-led order.
The real catastrophe is not Iranās enrichment centrifugesāit is Chinaās encirclement of the West.
In the rapidly digitizing landscape of modern America, our homes, businesses, and national infrastructure are increasingly reliant on interconnected devicesācollectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT). These devices promise convenience and efficiency, but they also pose an unprecedented cybersecurity challenge. From smart thermostats to baby monitors, each device can become a potential gateway for cyberattacks. The Biden Administrationās development of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark (CTM) attempted to meet this challenge. While we take issue with many elements of that administrationās broader regulatory agenda, the CTM represents a rare case of smart, market-aligned governance.
The CTM is a voluntary labeling program for consumer IoT products that allows manufacturers to demonstrate they meet certain cybersecurity standards. But its true innovation lies not in the sticker slapped on a product boxābut in the market incentives it unleashes. Unlike heavy-handed federal mandates, the CTM respects consumer choice, empowers corporate accountability, and opens the door to a new kind of risk-based procurement that strengthens our national cybersecurity from the ground up.
The 2025 IMF & World Bank Spring Meetings showed the system is broken.
Our movements are fighting back ā stronger, louder, unstoppable.
1. Bretton Woods is Broken: People Demand Justice, Not Austerity
