What is the advice of IMF and other “respectable” international financial institutions to a country that is running almost $10 billions budget surplus AFTER paying more that $15 billions of foreign debt without refinancing, and in a huge need of long-neglected infrastructural and other investments? That’s right, “reign in spending” (from the article in Financial Times by Paul Thomsen and John Odling-Smee in August 2003). A few months ago I recall sitting through the IMF seminar on Russian economy in Washington D.C., where again this subject was played on, with “concern that Russian government’s fiscal discipline slipped” lately. It was a truly bizarre feeling – in a city where one can almost literally hear a giant whooshing sound of tsunami of budgetary red ink, where the President Bush’s idea of war sacrifices is not to leave a single lobbyist behind, together with a call to voters to stuff their fat asses into ever bigger SUVs and drive to the mall to buy more stuff on credit cards.
http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/index.html?art=500
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