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Showing posts with the label "public spending"

IMF

In 1998 the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial that said that the IMF ‘has not been fighting financial fires but dousing them with gasoline’. The IMF pours the first tranche of gasoline. Vijay Prashad has an update The IMF does not fight financial fires but douses them with gasoline
On current exchange rates, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy, but no one seriously believes it produces more goods and services than India, Brazil or Indonesia. The UK’s prosperity level is not even in the top 15 per cent of IMF members. The US, Germany and France are far ahead of Britain in the  productivity league table and output per head and per worker does not even match that of Italy. Spending on public services is severely strained: at 39 per cent of national income, it is 5 percentage points below that of Germany.  Britain's economy: how strong is it?