IMF to US: tighten harder!

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Jul 15 09:58:07 PDT 2000


michael at ecst.csuchico.edu wrote:


>This is fascinating. Imagine that the U.S. were a country without power
>and influence. It would have no choice but to follow these
>recommendations, especially with the high current account deficit.

Yup. So the U.S. being the U.S., what will happen with the c/a deficit? I think this sheds some light on John Taber's cui bono question about boosting national savings: at some level, in some fashion, the U.S. elite realizes that it can't keep running c/a deficits of 4% of GDP. Normal prescriptions would be for an austerity program, but that's not politically likely, short of a serious crisis. So how to structurally adjust (is that a split infinitive, or is "structurally adjust" a compound verb?) the U.S.?

Doug



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