Timeline:
1. IMF Managing Director Strauss Kahn is caught with his straussers down.
2. The UK's "Chancellor of the Exchequer" (that's Finance Minister, in plainspeak) George Osborne recommends yet another French politician for the job as IMF Managing Director (Directrix?).
3. IMF says no changes are needed to UK economic policy*.
* UK economic policy appear to consist of artificially low interest rates, high inflation, increases in the tax burden on the productive economy, a yawning budget deficit and - to top it all - cuts to front line services. Go figure.
Io! Saturnalia!
14 hours ago
4 comments:
Mark, I’ve got doubts about your claim that interest rates are ARTIFICIALLY low. If current rates are low compared to the rates that would prevail in a genuine free market, then obviously the word “artificial” is justified. But governments continually interfere with interest rates. It is thus difficult to say what genuine free market rates would be.
RM, fair point, but as the commercial banks are making risk free profits at the government's (i.e. the taxpayers') expense, I can confidently say they (i.e. those rates which the government can influence) are too low.
I think having inflation at ten times the base rate is also a bit of a giveaway.
B, DAMN! I wish I'd said that :-(
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