"IMF to Congress: No, seriously, guys, stop it"

[applegrove]

IMF to Congress: No, seriously, guys, stop it

By Neil Irwin at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/14/imf-to-congress-no-seriously-guys-stop-it/

"SNIP.................................

The International Monetary Fund released its annual review of the United States economy on Friday. The fund expects the world’s largest economy to keep on growing at a steady 1.9 percent clip this year before accelerating sharply in 2014 and 2015.

Those projections are pretty mainstream. What is fascinating is how explicitly the fund is assailing the fiscal policy that the U.S. government has enacted. The sequestration spending cuts, IMF economists argue, have triggered a sudden onset of austerity that is slowing growth this year while doing nothing to improve the nation’s longer-term fiscal situation.

“On the fiscal front, the deficit reduction in 2013 has been excessively rapid and ill-designed,” the review says. “In particular, the automatic spending cuts (“sequester”) not only exert a heavy toll on growth in the short term, but the indiscriminate reductions in education, science, and infrastructure spending could also reduce medium-term potential growth.”

And the fund’s economists make no bones about their preference for something along the lines of President Obama’s proposed budget. “These cuts should be replaced with a back-loaded mix of entitlement savings and new revenues, along the lines of the Administration’s budget proposal.”

................................SNIP"

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I hate it when the IMF says stuff I agree with. (nt)

[applegrove]

2. LOL! Must be hard for you. Nice to see the world coming together

Last edited Sat Jun 15, 2013, 10:39 PM - Edit history (2)

in understanding liberalism/keynesianism is the way to go.

[DreamGypsy]

3. Perhaps this will cheer you up...

...looking forward to the future as the United States becomes a third world country.

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose world is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor