Tuesday 5 July 2011

IMF: repeating past mistakes? More like modus operandi

Jeremy Warner writing in the Telegraph puts forward the idea that the IMF are ignoring the lessons of the past:

The policy review document was originally published in October 2003 and signed off by a then relatively unknown IMF official called Tim Geithner, now the US Treasury Secretary no less.

Strangely enough, he seems entirely to have forgotten about this eight-year-old tome, whose candid and illuminating account of Argentina's descent into economic and fiscal chaos, and the not inconsiderable role the IMF played in the process, provides an object lesson in how not to proceed.

There's no application of its lessons to Greece and the rest of the troubled eurozone periphery; worse, in blind disregard for its own analysis, the IMF is making exactly the same mistakes all over again.

Jeremy, my naive friend, them's not mistakes. It's what they do -hook 'em, let 'em run, then reel 'em in (and btw Jeremy, lose the Karl Marx quotes, you're supposed to be writing about economics).

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