What makes this report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) so remarkable is its source. According to the IMF’s own website,
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 188 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.
The reality is vastly different. The IMF is the agent, along with the World Bank, that drives impoverishment in those 188 countries. Here’s what Anthony Wile says about this tag-team:
The World Bank and the IMF work hand in hand. The World Bank loans money to corrupt governments that loot or squander the funds and then the IMF comes in and insists on an “austerity program” of higher taxes and lower government spending to ensure the loans are paid back.
When a country like Latvia successfully resists the temptation of easy money offered by the IMF and decides instead to the do right, proper and prudent thing, the IMF would be the last place one would find an article praising such a decision, and the natural flow of prosperity that results. Here’s the opening paragraph from the IMF:
Latvia’s economy continues to recover strongly. Following real GDP growth of 5.5 percent in 2011, growth is expected to exceed 5 percent again this year despite recession in the euro area. Labor market conditions are improving. The unemployment rate fell from 16.3 percent at the beginning of the year to 13.5 percent at the end of the third quarter, despite an increase in participation rates. Real wage growth remains restrained. Consumer price inflation has declined sharply, easing to 1.6 percent at end-October after peaking at 4¾ percent in mid-2011. Robust export growth is expected to keep the current account deficit at about 2 percent despite recovering import demand.
Reading between the lines, the IMF is saying that Latvia would be much worse off if they had followed the IMF’s lead in “solving” their financial problems. This is how Anders Aslund, writing for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, put it:
Remember that in 2008–09, Latvia lost 24 percent of its GDP. It was heading toward a budget deficit of 19 percent of GDP in 2009 without a program of radical austerity. But the Latvian government did undertake austerity, and the last two years’ success shows the merits of that policy…
The going does not get much better than this. Latvia will have the highest growth rate and one of the smallest budget deficits in Europe this year, probably 5.3 percent, along with low inflation and wonderful export expansion. The only shortcoming is the still high unemployment rate, but unemployment is a lagging indicator and it is falling sharply.
Here’s how they did it:
The government told people how bad the situation was, and the various social partners responded by signing up to a truly radical austerity program. One-third of the civil servants were laid off; half the state agencies were closed, which prompted deregulation; the average public wage was cut by 26 percent in one year…
Top officials were hit … with 35 percent in wage cuts … [and] public servants were no longer allowed to sit on state corporate boards and earn more than from their salaries, a malpractice that is still common in many European countries. The government exposed high-level corruption.
Is there a lesson here for us?
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