IMF agrees with europe's anti-austerity protests (December 3 2012) IMF agrees with europe’s anti-austerity protests (December 3 2012)

Andy Robinson the 52 year old British Economics journalist has published an article in The Nation Magazine titled ‘Even the IMF Agrees with Europe’s Anti-Austerity Protests’. Robinson states “At its semiannual meeting in Tokyo … the IMF announced that the austerity packages applied throughout southern Europe since 2009 have been counterproductive, undermining economic growth and increasing rather than bringing down public debt ratios. Greece provides ghastly proof of the failed logic of the euro orthodoxy. After three years of shock therapy, the Greek economy is in depression and will have shrunk by more than 22 percent at the end 2013, the IMF warns. Employment in Greece has fallen to 1980 levels, and Greek debt dynamics have only deteriorated. Public sector debt has soared from 144 percent of GDP in 2010 to 170 percent, and unless the official lenders agree to take a haircut in a controlled restructuring of debt—as private lenders did earlier in the year—Greece may be forced to leave the euro. “The IMF has admitted the blunder, but tell that to the Greeks,” said Zoe Lanara, international relations secretary of the Greek General Confederation of Labor… overzealous fiscal adjustment cripples an economy, driving down tax revenues, forcing up welfare costs and causing more debt problems. While labor unions and sections of the European left have expressed concern at the impact of austerity on growth since the very beginning, “a year or so ago, most finance ministers didn’t even know what fiscal multipliers were,” said Terrence McDonough, a Marxist economist at the National University of Ireland.”

 

Inspired by The Nation ow.ly/fKcxM image source PressEurop ow.ly/fKcqo