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LONDON — The International Monetary Fund has issued a tough assessment of U.K. economic policy, urging the coalition government and Bank of England to do more to boost demand in the economy.
The IMF’s report of its latest consultation with British authorities released Tuesday called for more stimulus, either through further rounds of quantitative easing or by a further cut in the all-time low base lending rate of 0.5 percent.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sees no alternative to the strict austerity policies being imposed on many peripheral European countries, says the double dip recessions in Italy and Ireland just announced come as no surprise, and notes that IMF reforms will shift 6% of current quotas to dynamic emerging and developing countries.
Amid the hubbub over Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s sex scandal, emerging market countries have made it clear they want his successor to come from one of their countries. This would end the outdated “gentleman’s agreement” between the U.S. and Europe that guaranteed a European would take the slot of managing director, and an American would head up [...]
There’s a lot of talk about what Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest for sexually assaulting a maid means for the eurozone crisis. Less attention has gone to the fate of another project close to DSK’s heart: weaning the global financial system off of the U.S. dollar. DSK had been a vocal proponent of using the IMF’s de-facto currency, [...]
Ever since every two-bit financial commentator on the planet started complaining that, a year after the start of last year’s financial crisis, almost nothing had been done to prevent the next one, reform trial balloons have been floating skyward. There was the Fed’s pay-regulation scheme, the SEC’s new credit-rating-agency rules, Chris Dodd’s super-regulator plan, Tim [...]
