IMF chief Christine Lagarde warns world risks triple crisis

[arikara]

Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has warned that the world risks a triple crisis of declining incomes, environmental damage and social unrest unless countries adopt a more sustainable approach to economic growth. Ahead of the Rio+20 Earth summit later this month, she said the rich should restrain their demands for higher incomes while there are still 200 million people worldwide looking for a job and poverty is on the rise.

Giving her clearest backing yet to green taxes and a range of measures to protect the environment, she argued for taxes on petrol-guzzling cars among a range of green measures to tackle climate change.

<snip>

Lagarde, a right-wing former French finance minister, recently caused a storm of controversy after she accused Europeans of blocking progress to end the current financial crisis. Asked if she sympathised with Greeks impoverished by austerity measurers demanded by Brussels, she said the children of Niger were more her concern. It also emerged that Lagarde pays no tax on her $467,940 (£298,675) a year salary.

Ahead of the summit, she said taxes on petrol and other carbon fuels could raise billions of dollars for green investment projects. "Right now, less than 10% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are covered by formal pricing programmes. Only a handful of cities charge for the use of gridlocked roads. Farmers in rich countries are undercharged – if charged at all – for increasingly scarce water resources."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/12/imf-world-risks-triple-crisis-christine-lagarde
This technocratic slime ball either just doesn't get it or doesn't care. I suspect its the latter.

[jpbollma]

1. Well

The fact that she pays no taxes doesn't really shock me. After all, that is part of the reason why we all got into this mess. That said, I could never picture a right-winger in the USA saying some of what she said.

[JDPriestly]

2. She doesn't pay US taxes because she is considered to be a diplomat and therefore

exempt from US taxes. I'm not sure whether the article means to say that she pays no French taxes. If not, that is a matter of French law for the French people to decide.

She probably doesn't think that she earns all that much. That's the way the very rich think.

[JDPriestly]

3. She is right about the taxes for green investment products.

Wrong, in my opinion about water resources.

It would be better if she focused on overpopulation because that is the reason for all of our other problems.