Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Syndicates & Governments

[fectin]

Violating the CBC limits imposed by the IMF would be a very big deal,

Why? The IMF turning into a regulatory body that anyone at all cares about is straining my disbelief pretty hard. I totally buy that they end up being the only mint anyone cares about. That's weird, but plausible.
But this thing where they regulate MegaCorps is a bit harder. Why would the MegaCorps even notice?

[Username17]

Violating the CBC limits imposed by the IMF would be a very big deal,

Why? The IMF turning into a regulatory body that anyone at all cares about is straining my disbelief pretty hard. I totally buy that they end up being the only mint anyone cares about. That's weird, but plausible.
But this thing where they regulate MegaCorps is a bit harder. Why would the MegaCorps even notice?

The IMF essentially sets exchange rates. If you tell the IMF to go fuck themselves then you had better learn to love international isolation, because you can't buy or sell to foreign markets at an acceptable cost. If you're a corporation, that is not an acceptable state of affairs, since you don't have a domestic market.

-Username17

[Grek]

[quote="FrankTrollman]So the country that forms from that section of the Mississippi and parts of the Ohio is called "Egypt", except that there is already a country called that, so it is called "New Egypt".[/quote]

Does New Egypt have pyramid acrologies and mummifcation rituals?

[Hicks]

Americans have been making mummies of themselves since the late 1800's. Pyramid arcologies are soon to follow.

[Echoes]

[quote="FrankTrollman]So the country that forms from that section of the Mississippi and parts of the Ohio is called "Egypt", except that there is already a country called that, so it is called "New Egypt".

Does New Egypt have pyramid acrologies and mummifcation rituals?[/quote]

They totally should, drawing inspiration from the Mound Builders.

You could go all conspiracy-theorist and make them all about re-integrating the various "pyramid cultures" from around the world, in the belief that advanced aliens originally taught these different peoples the secrets of construction long ago and that by unifying all of the scattered teachings they can unlock the secrets of the universe and ascend to a higher plane, bring peace to the planet, or whatever.

Their magical tradition would look like an even more New Age-style Hermeticism, all pyramids and crystals, cribbing various elements from all over the world. Egyptian Name-magic, Babylonian demons, Central American blood sacrifice, and Theravada Buddhism are all big here, with as much drawn from pop culture as actual historical tradition.

[fectin]

Violating the CBC limits imposed by the IMF would be a very big deal,

Why? The IMF turning into a regulatory body that anyone at all cares about is straining my disbelief pretty hard. I totally buy that they end up being the only mint anyone cares about. That's weird, but plausible.
But this thing where they regulate MegaCorps is a bit harder. Why would the MegaCorps even notice?

The IMF essentially sets exchange rates. If you tell the IMF to go fuck themselves then you had better learn to love international isolation, because you can't buy or sell to foreign markets at an acceptable cost. If you're a corporation, that is not an acceptable state of affairs, since you don't have a domestic market.

-Username17

What prevents them from using the local currency, or guaranteeing their own exchange rates? The dollar is pretty solid, and still the only reason that local currencies don't spring up is that scary folks show up to shut them down. Heck, I remember when I was small, my mother was part of some group that traded off babysitting for eachother. They kept track with little hardware-store washers, and very quickly started spending them for other services.

Money just happens. All the time. It's really weird when it doesn't.

And there is no such thing as an unfavorable exchange rate there. Either it's set so that their $corp is super-desirable (print more; diversify holdings), or they are priced so that $corp is undesirable (liability reduced).

deleted a double post. Just FYI and documentation of such. --Z

[Endovior]

Why? The IMF turning into a regulatory body that anyone at all cares about is straining my disbelief pretty hard. I totally buy that they end up being the only mint anyone cares about. That's weird, but plausible.
But this thing where they regulate MegaCorps is a bit harder. Why would the MegaCorps even notice?

The IMF essentially sets exchange rates. If you tell the IMF to go fuck themselves then you had better learn to love international isolation, because you can't buy or sell to foreign markets at an acceptable cost. If you're a corporation, that is not an acceptable state of affairs, since you don't have a domestic market.

-Username17

What prevents them from using the local currency, or guaranteeing their own exchange rates? The dollar is pretty solid, and still the only reason that local currencies don't spring up is that scary folks show up to shut them down. Heck, I remember when I was small, my mother was part of some group that traded off babysitting for eachother. They kept track with little hardware-store washers, and very quickly started spending them for other services.

Money just happens. All the time. It's really weird when it doesn't.

And there is no such thing as an unfavorable exchange rate there. Either it's set so that their $corp is super-desirable (print more; diversify holdings), or they are priced so that $corp is undesirable (liability reduced).

Agreed. The IMF really can't be more powerful then any of the megacorps. As depicted the megacorps are huge enough that it'd be really easy for them to collude in whatever way and set up their own exchange rates, and the IMF basically couldn't do shit about it. Sure, the IMF has that whole $pider thing going on, and there's some value there... but that's a currency that really does only have as much value as people think it has. True, that could be said of basically all currencies ever, but it's especially obvious in a post-collapse setting. If the IMF were to go after one of the megacorps in a big way, slashing rates and whatnot, the megacorp in question could just completely ignore the IMF, making deals with other megacorps and local populations directly. The IMF could screw back harder, making whatever nuisance they like of themselves... but there's really nothing stopping anyone from just going in directly and setting up shop however they like. The IMF doesn't have any guns, so if a motivated corporation had a need to do so (say, the IMF imposed punishing costs of whatever sort, or even just really bad exchange rates), it'd seriously be cheaper to go in and set up their own competing stock markets and currency exchange houses then it would to pay any sum nontrivial enough to make a megacorp care.

The bottom line is that the IMF needs the megacorps far more then they need the IMF, so it'd be really weird if the IMF had any power to do anything the megacorps might particularly dislike. That means that the IMF is basically toothless, since if it can't meaningfully punish anyone without losing it's power and influence, it doesn't actually have all that much power. Of course, as the issuers of the $pider, they probably do remain just viable enough to satisfactorily fellate whichever megacorp is paying the most for it at the moment.

[Almaz]

What prevents them from using the local currency, or guaranteeing their own exchange rates? The dollar is pretty solid, and still the only reason that local currencies don't spring up is that scary folks show up to shut them down. Heck, I remember when I was small, my mother was part of some group that traded off babysitting for eachother. They kept track with little hardware-store washers, and very quickly started spending them for other services.

Money just happens. All the time. It's really weird when it doesn't.

And there is no such thing as an unfavorable exchange rate there. Either it's set so that their $corp is super-desirable (print more; diversify holdings), or they are priced so that $corp is undesirable (liability reduced).

I don't believe you understand 20th century economics, much less the nascent 21st century economics.

Even now, the International Monetary Fund routinely affects the economies of many nations. Just because you live in the areas where you won't see the fruits of those effects doesn't mean they don't happen. They do affect places where first world corporations sell their goods to, however, and where rapid modernization is taking place. This affects the political landscape of 2050+, when everything has the IMF's claws in them everywhere you go. Places have policy dictated to them even today by the IMF because of economic collapse largely generated by interacting with highly fluctuating markets that choose to spite them and cash out the moment their investment might be at the slightest risk... in other words, modern international markets sell out what amounts to entire nations, which then fall to the IMF's control because now they need a massive loan to remain functional. Guess what the entire United States probably had to do by this point in future history? Yeah.

Again, while it may not affect any given person very much, the only way a MegaCorp is going to have a market of appropriate size to interact with, as well as the manufacturing centers that make its products, is by interacting internationally. It's global market or bust, and if the IMF denies them then it is bust.

And no, the reason money doesn't "just happen" isn't because scary men say to stop. It's because a standard of currency is just that - a standard. It is the only thing that makes international trade happen. Many economic disruptions of massive scale have occurred because of failing of the standards. It's part of why gold is not the standard anymore. Because no one wanted to lock their currency to the value of gold. The United States did it for the longest time, and we suffered for it because we couldn't regulate our currency because we were valued at a certain rate to gold and changing that was forbidden. Then we moved off gold, but the entire world stuck to the standard of the United States Dollar, because it was stable and powerful and we were the only ones who could guarantee our dollar was worth shit from year to year. We obviously see that such a system is failing, and sometime in the future the international standard of money may be renminbi instead. Shrug.

Now the IMF is the only force that can guarantee that currency has any value, so the IMF controls things. Other people who try to start a currency don't have enough stability (yet) to convince anyone that their currency is of value. Megacorporations exist in a volatile landscape. A zaibatsu may last 100 years or it may be gone tomorrow. No one is certain. Governments also are strained. Who is to stay they won't fracture even further? The IMF stands apart from them, counting its money.

Apologies, I'm not an economist, and my knowledge of history is still a work in progress, but the idea that money that functions on an international trade level "just happens" is ludicrous.

[Username17]

The issue with the currency is that after the recession in the fifties, the megacorps as a whole signed on to the limited currency model.

If any one currency printing agency starts over printing, they get themselves short-term benefits for long-term penalties and hurt all the other players in the global economy. All the megacorps have an interest in none of the other megacorps flooding the currency market. The IMF are just the people with the expertise to actually figure out what constitutes "not over printing".

-Username17

[Endovior]

-snip-

That's the thing though. As was aptly demonstrated by the collapse, the IMF can't guarantee shit. That's why everything collapsed. In this post-collapse world, it's really obvious to everyone that currency is whatever you believe it to be, and so there's really no reason to put more faith in the IMF then in Standard Oil. Any large organization could theoretically fail at any time, and saving currency of any sort implies a bet that your money will still be good when you want to actually use it. The existing assumptions of the economic models people use in practice are such that it's unlikely that any of the megacorps will fall, or that your $piders will become worthless or whatever... but in actual practice, if the IMF starts shoving megacorps around, they'll shove back, and the IMF will lose. There's nothing backing the IMF's dictates, so there's nothing stopping anyone from going around them if they need to. People might pretend that the IMF has the power to do stuff... but if the IMF did start exercising it's 'powers' in a high-handed or non-trivially unfair way, then they'd quickly find themselves losing that power. Or, at least, having the relevant head of the IMF assassinated and replaced by a more pliable puppet, so as to minimize the economic disruptions. The IMF knows that they can't win in a direct conflict with the megacorps, and since the head of the IMF would personally prefer to not be assassinated, he doesn't ever do anything that would particularly offend any of the megacorps.

[Vebyast]

Hmm. The IMF needs an alternate source of authority, it sounds like. One possibility is a massive espionage division. The IMF knows what everybody is doing, can act on it if required, and in fact reassembled the world after the collapse by doing so. They're basically the biggest, baddest megacorp around, and their monopoly is on spies.

[edit, read stuff that was posted while I was writing. Frank's idea makes sense; the IMF has everybody's trust and privileged information, and so can regulate the economy better than anybody else. The megacorps willingly cooperating on anything seemed out of character, though, so I went fishing for another explanation.]

[Endovior]

The issue with the currency is that after the recession in the fifties, the megacorps as a whole signed on to the limited currency model.

If any one currency printing agency starts over printing, they get themselves short-term benefits for long-term penalties and hurt all the other players in the global economy. All the megacorps have an interest in none of the other megacorps flooding the currency market. The IMF are just the people with the expertise to actually figure out what constitutes "not over printing".

-Username17

This makes more sense. However, it should be explicitly stated that it's not the IMF imposing rules on the megacorps, it's the megacorps as a whole coming together in a corporate-court style agreement to not do certain things that are recognized to be bad for everyone, and appointing the IMF as a theoretically neutral third party to oversee their desires. Accordingly, the IMF isn't actually enforcing anything; it's the megacorps that are enforcing the rules, with the IMF just being an intermediary.

[Surgo]

When I had read this the first time, I read that a lot of really damn rich people (which can include megacorps) had bought into the IMF. That's really authority enough.

[fectin]

The issue with the currency is that after the recession in the fifties, the megacorps as a whole signed on to the limited currency model.

If any one currency printing agency starts over printing, they get themselves short-term benefits for long-term penalties and hurt all the other players in the global economy. All the megacorps have an interest in none of the other megacorps flooding the currency market. The IMF are just the people with the expertise to actually figure out what constitutes "not over printing".

-Username17

This makes more sense. However, it should be explicitly stated that it's not the IMF imposing rules on the megacorps, it's the megacorps as a whole coming together in a corporate-court style agreement to not do certain things that are recognized to be bad for everyone, and appointing the IMF as a theoretically neutral third party to oversee their desires. Accordingly, the IMF isn't actually enforcing anything; it's the megacorps that are enforcing the rules, with the IMF just being an intermediary.

I completely agree. That backstory makes sense, and is critical to understanding how that system works.
Also, it provides some adventure hook, where one corp may be secretly overprinting, and the PCs are hired to prove/disprove this.


Edit: spoilered for clutter.

I don't believe you understand 20th century economics, much less the nascent 21st century economics.

you may not want to lead with that, when you have to end...

Apologies, I'm not an economist, and my knowledge of history is still a work in progress, but the idea that money that functions on an international trade level "just happens" is ludicrous.

...with this.

Even now, the International Monetary Fund routinely affects the economies of many nations. Just because you live in the areas where you won't see the fruits of those effects doesn't mean they don't happen. They do affect places where first world corporations sell their goods to, however, and where rapid modernization is taking place. This affects the political landscape of 2050+, when everything has the IMF's claws in them everywhere you go. Places have policy dictated to them even today by the IMF because of economic collapse largely generated by interacting with highly fluctuating markets that choose to spite them and cash out the moment their investment might be at the slightest risk... in other words, modern international markets sell out what amounts to entire nations, which then fall to the IMF's control because now they need a massive loan to remain functional. Guess what the entire United States probably had to do by this point in future history? Yeah.

In the future, there is no USA. The IMF has any impact at all today because they lend other nations' money (and there are no nations with that kind of money in 2050+) and Corporations today listen to the IMF because they are backed by nations with the power to actually sanction. None of that is true anymore in the future described so far.

Again, while it may not affect any given person very much, the only way a MegaCorp is going to have a market of appropriate size to interact with, as well as the manufacturing centers that make its products, is by interacting internationally. It's global market or bust, and if the IMF denies them then it is bust.

So lets walk through that: Bob buys frozen peas at S-Mart each week, using US$. Suddenly, the IMF denies S-Mart! Then what?

And no, the reason money doesn't "just happen" isn't because scary men say to stop. It's because a standard of currency is just that - a standard. It is the only thing that makes international trade happen. Many economic disruptions of massive scale have occurred because of failing of the standards. It's part of why gold is not the standard anymore. Because no one wanted to lock their currency to the value of gold. The United States did it for the longest time, and we suffered for it because we couldn't regulate our currency because we were valued at a certain rate to gold and changing that was forbidden. Then we moved off gold, but the entire world stuck to the standard of the United States Dollar, because it was stable and powerful and we were the only ones who could guarantee our dollar was worth shit from year to year. We obviously see that such a system is failing, and sometime in the future the international standard of money may be renminbi instead. Shrug.

You should really check your sources. Your argument reads similar to "Roses are red because 2+2=5". It's false claims backed by non-sequiters, which are themselves false.

[Endovior]

When I had read this the first time, I read that a lot of really damn rich people (which can include megacorps) had bought into the IMF. That's really authority enough.

Here's the thing, though... based on the nature of the IMF, it only has that kind of importance so long as the rich people in question choose to maintain their $pider holdings. If the IMF looks like it's being more then trivially partisan, or starts messing with any megacorp in particular, then all those rich people can, by the terms of what $piders actually mean, dump all their holdings immediately and leave the IMF holding the bag. And that's totally something that would happen if the IMF overstepped it's bounds, because such an action would imply a problem for the long-term stability of the $pider. If that ever actually did happen, of course, it'd involve quite a bit of disruption, where the first people to get away make out like bandits and the last ones out get screwed... provided that a plurality of $pider holders actually agreed with that assessment, since if they didn't, then the people who dropped their $piders would be screwed, and the people that kept them would be smug.

Since it's too hard for the average holder to predict just what might come of that kind of economic disaster, the fall of the IMF isn't something that anyone really wants. But at the same time, the fall of the IMF would be proportionately better for any given megacorp then the IMF screwing them over in any nontrivial way... so the IMF just doesn't do that. Instead, it'd be closer to what we have these days... with months of debate and much speculation and favor-trading behind a half a percent change in interest rates of some such. Of course, this is because half a percent of anything applied to a megacorporate income is huge. Even so, that's about all the IMF can reasonably do, since with anything much beyond that, the stakes get too high... meaning it becomes cheaper for the party on the losing side to bribe, threaten, and assassinate their way to making it not happen.

[fectin]

provided that a plurality of $pider holders actually agreed with that assessment, since if they didn't, then the people who dropped their $piders would be screwed, and the people that kept them would be smug.

At worst, you lose a couple percent of your holdings.
Think of it like cashing out of US$ today: if you wanted to do that, you'd pick a few currencies that seemed stable, or a few commodities which seemed non-volatile, and buy them at or below(hey, it could happen) market price. Say Canadian$ and renmimbi, or diamonds, copper, and iridium. Whatever.
Either the thing you wanted out of tanks, or it doesn't if it does, you get to laugh and laugh. if it doesn't, you can opt to reenter it only having paid the frictional costs of your transactions. Or not, up to you.

So, there's really very little incentive to hold $pdrs if the IMF wants to screw with you.

[Grek]

The IMF does have real power, and I'm not sure why people think it doesn't.

The IMF has a rule to prevent megacorps from issuing more CBCs than they can actually pay back. By definition, anyone that is breaking that rule has issued more CBCs than they can pay back, and will be stuck holding the bag if the IMF convinces enough people to cash out of the CBCs and ask for more diamonds than the megacorp can actually provide. As long as the IMF continues to be consistantly correct about who's violating the CBC rules, they maintain their power to enforce those rules simply by telling the investors if someone is violating them and letting market forces handle the rest.

[Kobajagrande]

Then we moved off gold, but the entire world stuck to the standard of the United States Dollar, because it was stable and powerful and we were the only ones who could guarantee our dollar was worth shit from year to year

Facts disagree

[Username17]

Then we moved off gold, but the entire world stuck to the standard of the United States Dollar, because it was stable and powerful and we were the only ones who could guarantee our dollar was worth shit from year to year

Facts disagree

What the fuck? The Bancor never happened. Almaz is talking about the Bretton Woods agreement. Almaz is fairly accurately describing the situation in 1971.

You can't just link to some random thing and call it a counter argument. Your link might as well have been a Goatse or a Rick Roll.

-Username17

[Endovior]

The IMF does have real power, and I'm not sure why people think it doesn't.

The IMF has a rule to prevent megacorps from issuing more CBCs than they can actually pay back. By definition, anyone that is breaking that rule has issued more CBCs than they can pay back, and will be stuck holding the bag if the IMF convinces enough people to cash out of the CBCs and ask for more diamonds than the megacorp can actually provide. As long as the IMF continues to be consistantly correct about who's violating the CBC rules, they maintain their power to enforce those rules simply by telling the investors if someone is violating them and letting market forces handle the rest.

That's the thing, though... you can't actually get diamonds for your CBCs, since CBC stands for Currency-Backed-Currency. While the IMF's $piders are immediately backed by every currency the IMF approves of, at whatever exchange rates the IMF declares, the various $corpions are something that you can potentially trade for another currency at some predefined future date. As such, the actual value of any given $corpion cannot be all that different from that of the currency it is theoretically backed by, except and unless the megacorp in question appears to be financially insolvent, which should be rare.

If Standard Oil issues 500,000 Standard $corpions, then they'll issue them for something like at $20 USD each, payable for $25 in five years. Afterwards, people will pay somewhat more than $20 for them, and barter them between each other in the expectation that they'll eventually be worth $25. Like any other bond, the only volatility in the price of $corpions is bound up in speculation over interest rates. If people think that interest rates will rise, then your $corpions are less valuable, because anything new that comes out will be more valuable then whatever is already on the market. If people think the opposite, then vice-versa, since the new $corpions are less valuable then the older ones. Of course, in either scenario, there are people who will play the other side and buy or sell $corpions to you, on the assumption that you are wrong, and that they'll be able to sell you your money back at a premium later.

The only other factor we have here is the possibility that a company will be unable to repay it's bonds, which isn't conceptually any different from the probability that a country will default on it's debt these days. It's hard to say whether or not Standard Oil has too many $corpions on the market, since they take real money in with each $corpion and can potentially turn that money into more real value faster then the interest rate increases. That's the underlying assumption behind any printing of bonds by a corporation, after all... as, unlike governments, corporations are in it for profit, not to appease voters with bread and circuses.

If the IMF says that Standard Oil is overprinting, then that's not so much saying that Standard Oil is actually putting out too much paper... it's really saying that Standard Oil is not in a position to turn any new capital it takes in to valuable products and resources faster then the prevailing interest rates. If they're believed, then people will probably stop buying $corpions from Standard Oil directly, and it'll probably decrease the price of the $corpions that are already on the market, as people suspect that Standard Oil might not be able to repay them. Whether or not it's actually true that Standard Oil is overprinting, this declaration would be a boon to them, since they could take advantage of the low prices to buy back their previously-issued $corpions at a discount, provided that they've got any capital available at all with which to pay off their debts extra-cheaply. This declaration does not actually harm Standard Oil much, aside from making it temporarily more difficult to acquire new capital from the public at large... and accordingly, it's not actually that strong a power.

[Kobajagrande]

Then we moved off gold, but the entire world stuck to the standard of the United States Dollar, because it was stable and powerful and we were the only ones who could guarantee our dollar was worth shit from year to year

Facts disagree

What the fuck? The Bancor never happened. Almaz is talking about the Bretton Woods agreement. Almaz is fairly accurately describing the situation in 1971.

You can't just link to some random thing and call it a counter argument. Your link might as well have been a Goatse or a Rick Roll.

-Username17

Errr... The part where the entire world stuck to USD because it was so good, as opposed to US forcing that solution over the other one for personal interests? Facts disagree.

[fectin]

That's true, but incomplete: not all currencies are CBC or fiat. Unlike governments, corps actually make stuff (or provide services that you personally are willing to pay for. Issuing a currency backed in MilkCorp Milk, or LawCorp hours, or HotelCorp stays, or whatever means that your currency has a minimum value. And because corporations presumably sell and outsource to eachother, other companies are going to be interested in taking $corpions.

You can see this in action today with Hertz points, Southwest miles, Hilton Honors points, etc.

[Endovior]

That's true, but incomplete: not all currencies are CBC or fiat. Unlike governments, corps actually make stuff (or provide services that you personally are willing to pay for. Issuing a currency backed in MilkCorp Milk, or LawCorp hours, or HotelCorp stays, or whatever means that your currency has a minimum value. And because corporations presumably sell and outsource to eachother, other companies are going to be interested in taking $corpions.

You can see this in action today with Hertz points, Southwest miles, Hilton Honors points, etc.

Mostly true. However, it is notable that $corpions are specifically defined as being bonds. The fact that individual megacorps might also issue scrip, especially to it's employees, doesn't make scrip something that's especially valuable to the average joe. Currency exchangeable only for MaBell's Megabytes simply isn't as valuable as currency that you can also use at the corner store to buy bread, and although people who live in Kansas City in the shadow of MaBell's arcology complex can probably do both with it, they still recognize that USD is probably more valuable, and won't give you a nice flat exchange rate if you want to trade. Similarly, though on a wider scale, currency you can only use in parts of the US isn't as valuable as the $piDeR, which you can inevitably exchange somewhere to let you buy anything that's purchasable anywhere on Earth, or even Mars.

[fectin]

Mostly true. However, it is notable that $corpions are specifically defined as being bonds.

I missed that. And I can't find it either. But that would explain a lot of it.

The fact that individual megacorps might also issue scrip, especially to it's employees, doesn't make scrip something that's especially valuable to the average joe. Currency exchangeable only for MaBell's Megabytes simply isn't as valuable as currency that you can also use at the corner store to buy bread, and although people who live in Kansas City in the shadow of MaBell's arcology complex can probably do both with it, they still recognize that USD is probably more valuable, and won't give you a nice flat exchange rate if you want to trade. Similarly, though on a wider scale, currency you can only use in parts of the US isn't as valuable as the $piDeR, which you can inevitably exchange somewhere to let you buy anything that's purchasable anywhere on Earth, or even Mars.

But corps probably charge enough of a premium (because it doesn't take much) to handle anything that isn't their scrip or $piders that an exchange can make a small fortune offering slightly discounted prices for that corp. And corps presumably do enough business back and forth that they want to hold reserves of in scrip of companies they deal with a lot.
Essentially, by artificially inflating the value of their scrip (i.e. giving slightly more goods for it than the exchange rate would normally dictate), corps get an interest free loan, paid for solely by discount points.
So even someone far from anywhere the corp operates can exchange scrip for $piders, because he can find someone who actually does want that scrip.
It's exactly like gift cards.

[name_here]

The IMF has serious power because Megacorps simply don't like each other enough to cooperate to replace it. If $piders were to collapse, you wouldn't have the Megacorps collude to make a new exchange currency; you'd just stop being able to exchange CSA dollars for New Egypt dollars without first exchanging them for about three intermediary currencies to chart a path through countries that recognize the legitimacy of each other.

So, most likely the IMF does not randomly fuck with Megacorps, Megacorps listen to the IMF, and any exceptions to the second rule stop getting to issue CBCs or buy things like electricity and internet. A Megacorp could try to set up their own exchanges, but none of the other Megacorps would recognize the legitimacy of their currency, their scrip, or their contracts. After all, even Megacorps collapse, and when they do, their scrip becomes waste paper.

Obviously, the IMF cannot piss off all the Megacorps, but it can blacklist any single Megacorp just fine. Its power comes from being important to all the Megacorps and all legitimate national governments, not from being important to that one Megacorp that pissed them off, so they can levy exchange rate penalties and cut CBC allotments to rulebreakers without losing too much sleep. Also, I find it extremely unlikely assassinating the IMF leadership is in any way practical. After all, they have money. The thing with money is that you can use it to hire people with guns, and the IMF has enough hire a lot of people with guns.