Monday, May 20, 2013

Sina (Xinhua) English — High public debt raises fiscal crisis risk: IMF official


More R-R out of the IMF today.
Carlo Cottarelli, Director of IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, ... said the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product (GDP) has surpassed 90 percent in some advanced economies, and high debt would hamper economic growth.
Wake him up.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

"We tend to underestimate the cost of fiscal crises before they occur," Carlo Cottarelli, Director of IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, said during a luncheon speech hosted by the Washington- based think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics ( PIIE)."

lol

Ralph Musgrave said...

R & R are liars.

Lie No. 1. For 20 years after WWII, the UK’s debt /GDP ratio averaged over 100% (and was at a maximum of over 200%). That coincided with decent economic growth in the UK, which clearly wouldn’t have fitted the result that R&R wanted. So what did they do? They just omitted that awkward fact from their study. Or rather they gave it the same weight as ONE YEAR for New Zealand, a country a tenth the size of the UK.

Lie No 2. They claim their study was misrepresented by politicians in that politicians claimed the R&R study showed that high debt caused low growth, while their study said nothing about which way the cause/effect ran (from debt to low growth or vice versa). So did they try to alert anyone to the misuse being made of their study? Not that I know of.

I.e. their claim to be impartial academics without any political axe to grind is a lie. And the latter point is given further weight by the numerous articles they published pushing the idea that high debt causes low growth.

Unknown said...

It's no mystery to me. The banks want to be in charge of ALL money creation; monetary sovereigns make them nervous.

The solution is simple; coexisting government and private money supplies (per Matthew 22:16-22) with floating exchange rates between them. That way, government monetary mismanagement does not necessarily harm the private sector and vice versa.

Jonf said...

How does China do it? They have been growing at north of 7% for 20 years. I am told they build infrastructure when other things go bad like they did after 2008 for some time. What is their debt to gdp or don't they do that?

Yes, Ralph, those two are charlatans. They have close ties to Petersen.

Anonymous said...

"It's no mystery to me. The banks want to be in charge of ALL money creation; monetary sovereigns make them nervous.

The solution is simple; coexisting government and private money supplies (per Matthew 22:16-22) with floating exchange rates between them. That way, government monetary mismanagement does not necessarily harm the private sector and vice versa."

feel free to use bitcoins

Unknown said...

Bitcoins are dumber than gold which is very dumb.

Good ole fiat might suffice by itself if it weren't wasted on propping up the counterfeiting cartel, the banking system.

But I guess the so-called "creditworthy" would object to purely private banks.

Anonymous said...

What is purely private bank? Try to create private fiat without government backing up your promises by accepting them for payment of taxes and you have something similar to bitcoin.

Unknown said...

Well, purely private banks would most likely promise redemption in fiat but without a fiat lender of last resort and government deposit insurance they would not dare leverage much.

As for Bitcoin, it is a stupid money form since it is a fixed money supply; once the limit has been "mined."

A much smarter money form is common stock which is backed by performing assets, is democratic, and which "shares" wealth and power even as it consolidates it for economies of scale.