Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Bill Mitchell — IMF on Greece – they haven’t learned from their mistakes

In the most recent take of the Greek crisis, the IMF seems to have come out as being the reasonable part of the Troika as a result of its last minute release of a document where it said that Greece’s debt position was unsustainable and that any longer-term settlement of the crisis would require “debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far”. But a closer reading of that report (July 14, 2015) – An Update of IMF Staff’s Preliminary Public Debt Sustainability Analysis – tells me that the IMF hasn’t learned very much at all from the disastrous and repeated mistakes they made that have deepened and prolonged the Euro crisis. They are still hanging on to the neo-liberal mantra that if only Greece had followed the ‘structural reform’ program fully it would now be out of crisis and not in need of debt relief. It is a pipe dream that only these neo-liberals can contrive when their whacky ideas are confronted with the reality of the monetary system.…
As Michael Hudson is fond of saying, "junk economics." As these people blinded by ideology, or just plain stupid. Or maybe insane, repeating failure aka digging the hole deeper, while expecting different results.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
IMF on Greece – they haven’t learned from their mistakes
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

1 comment:

Matt Franko said...

They at some level realize they are going to be the one institution left holding the bag.....