International Monetary Fund Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is out after being charged with sexual assault against a hotel maid in New York. Unfortunately, many members of the world’s governing elite stand ready to take his place. Who should succeed Strauss-Kahn — a European or someone from the developing world? If the criterion is the welfare of ordinary people, the answer is simple: No one should succeed him. The IMF (along with allied agencies such as the World Bank) should be abolished. It does not improve most people’s lives, but rather imposes corporatist “neoliberalism” on troubled countries and suppresses the emergence of free markets. The IMF is the centerpiece of Keynes’ postwar Bretton Woods scheme, designed to coordinate central banking worldwide and enable the economic planners in the United States and its closest allies to shape the world economy. When the system of fixed exchange rates ended in 1971, the IMF assumed a new mission: to be 9-1-1 for profligate, debt-ridden governments that couldn’t repay their loans to Western banks or buy enough exports to keep the Western economies humming.The U.S. government forces American taxpayers to provide about 17 percent of the IMF’s $340 billion slush fund. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the U.S. member of the board of governors, with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke the alternate governor. That should be enough to establish that the IMF’s agenda is not free markets. The agency claims to help troubled countries by monitoring the world economy, providing technical advice and lending money to governments that can’t pay their debts. Its record is dismal.The IMF has been bad at foreseeing crises. But why would bureaucrats living off the taxpayers, with no personal capital at risk, be expected to spot economic trouble? Bureaucrats can’t know what they need to know because the crucial knowledge doesn’t exist as easily accessible data.The promise of “technical assistance” is a joke because economies aren’t machines but networks of human activity. The IMF’s advice — commonly to raise taxes — is usually counterproductive, but since it often carries the “free market” label, it creates public resentment against real market reform.Even when it gives proper advice, say, to abolish price controls on food, the failure of the government to remove other interference with the market — licensing, franchises, patents and so on — can impose hardship on already suffering people. The “free market” then is blamed. Food riots occurred some years ago in Egypt under just such circumstances, and as a result market reforms are widely distrusted there.IMF loans seem altruistic, but in fact they bail out rulers from the consequences of their exploitative schemes — sparing them the necessity of radical change, such as land reform and free banking — and their creditors — Wall Street banks typically. American farmers and other exporters have lobbied for increased U.S. contributions to the IMF in the belief that more loans to failing countries mean more sales abroad. If the loans are repaid, the money comes out of the hides of poor taxpayers in the developing world.The IMF emphasizes that loans always come with “conditionality,” but that’s small comfort. The deepest violations of individual liberty and market principles are left untouched. Real markets require individual liberty, free banking, zero legal barriers to entrepreneurship and property rights for ordinary people. Markets are not free when large tracts of land are controlled by a feudal elite, leaving most people little choice but to take whatever is given. Their acceptance may represent the “best available option,” but if their choice set has been artificially constricted, that’s not saying much.For decades the IMF has fostered long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard and politicization, while sullying true market reform and forestalling revolutionary liberal change. The solution is not for the IMF to impose free markets, even if it had the will or the ability. That would smack of imperialism and, writes former World Bank economist William Easterly, would have “patronizing echoes of the white man’s burden.”The IMF should be scrapped and the people suffering under kleptocracy left to discover for themselves the requirements for improving their own lives. How much more “help” from the West can they stand?Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org).
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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