It is becoming fashionable in some of the European leading
circles to blame the IMF for the failure of some financial adjustment
programmes such as the Greek or the Portuguese. It is as if the EU Commission
and the European Central Bank, the two other members of the Troika that has
negotiated such programmes on behalf of the international creditors, had just
been compelled to go along with the IMF.
Nothing is less true. In many ways, it has been the EU
Commission that had shown up to recently the most dogmatic approach to
programme design and its implementation. They have been the ones pushing some
very single-minded ideas such as labour cost reductions and a short-term
approach to fiscal corrections. Now, having realised that the public opinion is
turning in large numbers against these measures, they backtrack and blame the
weaker member of the group.
This shows again that the European leadership feels corralled
against the wall and has no guts to fight back for their position.
No comments:
Post a Comment