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Comment by Salamat | Hacker News Reader

Any possible relation to the arrest of Assange? IMF board approves $4.2 bln financing deal with Ecuador March 11 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved the $4.2 billion financing deal with Ecuador https://www.reuters.com/article/ecuador-imf/imf-board-approv...

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Good question: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/extarr2.aspx?memberK...

Ecuador has been reeling with weak economic growth and increased debt for a while now. Although there were still other options to finance their problems for the time being, it is likely that Ecuador has requested IMF financing and it has been blocked at the executive level for a few years on the condition that they played ball. Coupled that with the fact that Assange lost almost all his political capital and 'friendly points' in the past few years, it became a matter of when, not if, Ecuador would trade in.

Is there any actual evidence for this at all?

A good question is, how could we accumulate such evidence? If only someone would, say, publish caches of diplomatic cables so we can know how our governments operate.

Call me a patsy, but it seems more likely that Ecuador kicked him out of the embassy because it asked him not to do certain things as a condition of his living there, and he did those things.

Naive patsy then.

Ecuador's governments have always been blackmailed by the US via the CIA. Moreno was just an intermediate for them, like Chavez, Allende or Lua, to get over with eventually. In the end there's always either a fascist putsch or electorial takeover. Philip Agee's book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" explains all the gory details.

Trump is famous for requesting things to "make the deal easier" and then proceeding to ask for even more. So quite possibly Ecuador is going to be finding out fairly soon about additional things they need to do to get those loans.

Are you saying Trump directs the terms of IMF funding?

No, he's saying Trump and the IMF could be employing similar tactics.

Not directly, but yes the U.S. has quite a bit of leverage over the IMF.

That article is a month old——so, unlikely.

I don't see how that makes it unlikely. This has probably been months in the making.

You know real life politics doesn't move as fast as you see on TV right?

IMF has last granted a loan to Ecuador in Mar 21, 2003, that is 16 years. Now Ecuador is a client.

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