The IMF Is the Doctor Kevorkian of Global Economic Policy

I don’t like giving international bureaucrats tax-free salaries. And it really galls me when they use their privileged positions to promote statism.

So you can understand why I’m not a big fan of the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Kevorkian: “My assisted suicide campaign would have been much more efficient if I worked at the IMF”

Whether we’re talking more spending, more taxes, more bailouts, or more centralization and harmonization, it seems that the IMF is the Dr. Kevorkian of the global economy.

Or, since Doctor Kevorkian faded from the headlines more than 10 years ago, perhaps it would be better to say that the International Monetary Fund is the Doctor Gosnell of global economic policy.

But I don’t want to get into issues of assisted suicide or post-birth abortions, so let’s just say that the IMF has a very disturbing habit of recommending bad policy. Here are just a few of the items I’ve flagged over the past couple of years.

• Endorsing government cartels to boost tax and regulatory burdens.
• Trying to undermine flat tax systems in Albania and Latvia.
• Encouraging a “collective response” to over-spending in welfare states.
• Pushing for higher tax burdens in Greece.
• Seeking the same destructive policy in Cyprus.
• Advocating for more centralization and bureaucratic rule in Europe.
• Urging higher taxes in El Salvador.
• Supporting “eurobonds” so that taxpayers from other nations can subsidize the profligacy of welfare states such as Greece, Italy, and Spain.

But you need to give the bureaucrats credit for sticking to their guns.

We have more and more evidence with each passing day that Keynesian economics doesn’t work. President Bush imposed a so-called stimulus plan in 2008 and President Obama imposed an even  bigger “stimulus” in 2009. Based upon the economy’s performance over the past five-plus years, those plans didn’t work.

Japan has spent the past 20-plus years imposing one Keynesian scheme after another, and the net effect is economic stagnation and record debt. Going back further in time, Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt dramatically increased the burden of government spending, mostly financed with borrowing, and a recession became a Great Depression.

That’s not exactly a successful track record

Yet the IMF is undaunted. The bureaucrats are pushing Keynesian snake oil and bigger government all across Europe.

Here are some details from a Wall Street Journal report. about the IMF’s promotion of assisted suicide in Central Europe.

The International Monetary Fund is recommending short-term stimulus for much of Central Europe, where economies are going through their roughest patch in years and the recession in the euro zone has dampened hopes for a quick recovery. …Increased government spending to stimulate economic activity and create jobs is therefore warranted, he said. “Short-term economic policies should be geared toward supporting the economy and not creating an additional drag.” …Amid spending cuts, the countries’ fortunes reversed recently.  …the Czech Republic should ease up on fiscal austerity and embark on pro-growth spending, the leader of the IMF’s Czech mission said. …The IMF also has been encouraging looser monetary policy in both Poland and the Czech Republic.

Gee, not just more Keynesianism, but easy money as well!

The IMF also is pushing bad policy on the Brits (though I’m not sure why they’re bothering since the statist government of David Cameron hardly needs any help in that regard).

Here are some details from the EU Observer.

The UK should delay plans to push through further austerity measures worth £10 billion (€12 billion), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Wednesday. …The extra cuts would “pose headwinds to growth…..at a time when resources in the economy are under-utilised,” said the Washington-based institution. Instead, the IMF urged London to bring forward plans to invest in infrastructure projects… The government “could undertake a reform of property taxes and consider broadening the VAT base” to pay for the measures.

What’s remarkable is that the IMF isn’t even intellectually honest about its Keynesian proclivities. They’re happy to advocate for more spending, but honest Keynesians also should be against tax hikes. Yet the bureaucrats proposed a couple of tax hikes to “pay for the measures.”

In other words, the IMF agenda is bigger government – with more taxes and more spending.

Which raises the question of why all of us are paying for a bloated bureaucracy that simply tells politicians to implement bad policies? Particularly since politicians have demonstrated over and over again that they’re immensely qualified at concocting their own bad policies?

P.S. To be fair, I should admit that there are rare bits of sanity from the economists at the IMF. They’ve acknowledged, for instance, that the Laffer Curve is real and warned that it makes no sense to push taxes too high. And some of the bureaucrats have even admitted that it sometimes makes sense to reduce the burden of government spending. And even though it wasn’t their intention, IMF bureaucrats provided very strong evidence showing why the value-added tax is a destructive money machine for big government.

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Does Your Family Have an Extra $5,500 to Pay the Higher Energy Taxes Proposed by the Bureaucrats at the IMF (Who Get Tax-Free Salaries)?

If asked to name my least-favorite international bureaucracy, the easy answer would be the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

After all, it was only a few days ago that I outlined different ways that the Paris-based bureaucracy is seeking to expand statism and reduce freedom around the world.

Our tax money at the OECD, UN, and IMF

I’m particularly nauseated by the OECD’s support for value-added taxes and their ridiculous assertion that poverty is higher in America than Greece or Turkey.

But we can’t forget the United Nations, which pushes a plethora of bad policies, including a push for regulatory control over the Internet, support for global taxation, supranational gun control schemes, attacks on sovereignty of American states, and support for a “right” to taxpayer-financed birth control (though at least they had the good sense to invite me to speak at last year’s “High Level Thematic Debate on the State of the World Economy”).

For today, though, my least favorite bureaucracy is the International Monetary Fund. I recently listed many of the ways that this gold-plated institution of over-paid and un-taxed paper pushers supports bigger government, but this story from today’s Washington Post is the icing on the cake of statism.

The report on a new IMF study started on a very positive note.

Government subsidies of gasoline, electricity and other energy sources amount to about $1.9 trillion a year and should be ended.

I’m against subsidies, so what’s not to like about a proposal to end handouts?

Well, it turns out that the IMF has a very strange way of defining subsidies. For logical people, a subsidy occurs when the government takes money from Person A and gives it to Person B.

In the la-la land of the IMF, however, a “subsidy” occurs if the government doesn’t tax as much from Person A as the bureaucrats would like. I’m not joking.

In the developed world, the IMF says the subsidies are even larger but less overt, reflecting that government tax policies do not capture the costs of pollution and other externalities. Using economic models and other studies performed as part of the larger global warming debate, the IMF puts those indirect subsidies at $1.4 trillion — $25 for each ton of carbon dioxide produced — and suggests they be offset through an “efficient” tax that makes energy users pay the full cost of the product.

To be fair, private behavior can impose costs on other people (“externalities”), so there’s nothing automatically wrong with looking at these indirect costs.

The problem is that the IMF used discredited global warming ideology to concoct an absurd $1.4 trillion estimate of “subsidies.”

And guess what that means?

For the United States, the IMF estimated that would require a $1.40 levy per gallon of gas and other fees totaling more than $1,400 per person each year — around $500 billion in total.

Wow, that’s more than $5,500 for a family of four.

Remember that these bureaucrats get extremely generous tax-free salaries, yet they apparently don’t see any hypocrisy in recommending huge tax increases for the peasantry.

“It is time for subsidies to end and carbon taxation to be put in place,” IMF First Deputy Managing Director David Lipton said in an interview Tuesday.

Amazing. I’m sure this leech is driven around in a private limousine, flies around the world in first class, and enjoys the services of the private chefs in the IMF’s elite dining room – all at our expense. Yet he wants the rest of us to pay higher tax.

P.S. You’ll be happy to know that the IMF study deliberately “did not look at government support for the alternative energy industry.” So Obama’s corrupt “green energy” programs got a free pass. Gee, how convenient.

P.P.S. I realize that I forgot the mention the World Bank, the folks who put together a fiscal report card giving nations higher grades if they imposed harsher tax burdens.

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Let’s Enjoy a Victory – even if Temporary – in the Fight against More Bloat at the International Monetary Fund

I’m not a fan of the International Monetary Fund. It galls me that a bunch of bureaucrats enjoy opulent lifestyles at our expense, and don’t even have to pay on their lavish incomes.

But I might be willing to overlook all that if it wasn’t for the fact that IMF routinely and reflexively pushes for bad policy.

• Endorsing government cartels to boost tax and regulatory burdens.
• Trying to undermine flat tax systems in Albania and Latvia.
• Encouraging a “collective response” to over-spending in welfare states.
• Pushing for higher tax burdens in Greece.
• Seeking the same destructive policy in Cyprus.
• Advocating for more centralization and bureaucratic rule in Europe.
• Urging higher taxes in El Salvador.
• Supporting “eurobonds” so that taxpayers from other nations can subsidize the profligacy of welfare states such as Greece, Italy, and Spain.

And the icing on the cake is that the IMF was created for the purpose of helping the manage the system of fixed exchange rates that was imposed after World War II. That system no longer exists, yet the IMF is still plaguing us.

I’ll be happy if they simply take their hands out of my pockets

I remember reading someplace that cockroaches were the only animals that would survive a nuclear war. I have no idea if that’s true, but it appears that international bureaucracies have similar survival skills.

But I’m digressing. Notwithstanding all the bad news listed above, we’re celebrating some good news today.

Here’s the situation. The IMF has been so busy subsidizing bad policy around the world with lots of bailouts that the gold-plated bureaucracy wants American approval to permanently misallocate more of the world’s capital.

I’ve explained over and over again why it’s not a good idea to give more matches to a pyromaniac. But I never expected that lawmakers would do the right thing.

Yet they have, so let’s enjoy this fleeting experience. Here are some excerpts from a Reuters report.

…lawmakers…rebuffed a request by the Obama administration to approve a permanent increase in U.S. funding to the International Monetary Fund in a setback for IMF reforms to boost the voting power of emerging economies. The reforms need congressional approval because they involve shifting and making permanent a $65 billion U.S. contribution to an IMF crisis fund. …the U.S. Treasury sought to tuck the provision into pending legislation in Congress that aims to avoid a U.S. government shutdown at the end of March. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives rejected the IMF funding request last week, but the administration hoped the Democratic-led Senate would include it in its version of the funding bill. After days of negotiations, authors of the bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee rejected the request as too politically sensitive in the tense budget environment in Washington, where the sweeping government spending cuts triggered on March 1 are starting to be felt.

Wow. I wrote previously that rejecting additional IMF handouts was a minimum test of GOP seriousness in the battle against statism.

And they actually cleared that hurdle. Miracles do happen!

But there’s no such thing as a permanent victory in the battle against statism.

The Obama administration will have another shot at winning approval for increased IMF voting power when Congress starts work on a new set of spending bills later this spring for the 2014 fiscal year, which starts on October 1. But failure by President Barack Obama to reach a deal with Republicans to shrink the U.S. budget deficit could complicate any new requests for IMF funding, aides cautioned.

Not only is there no such thing as a permanent victory, even this bit of short-run success probably doesn’t mean much. If I understand correctly, the IMF already received the authority to squander the additional $65 billion. All that’s really happening now is a fight over whether to grant the bureaucrats permanent approval to misuse the funds.

But I’ll take any victory. Fighting for freedom in Washington is a rather grim task. Yet in the past month, we got the sequester and now we’ve stiff-armed the IMF.

I’m almost delirious with joy.

P.S. While the IMF almost always pushes bad policy, there are occasional glimmers of sanity from the economists on staff who write reports. Researchers at the international bureaucracy, for instance, have acknowledged the Laffer Curve and warned that it makes no sense to push taxes too high. And some of the bureaucrats have even admitted that it sometimes make sense to reduce the burden of government spending.

And even though it wasn’t their intention, IMF bureaucrats even provided very strong evidence showing why the value-added tax is a destructive money machine for big government.

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The IMF, Higher Taxes, and Mitchell’s Law

Here are three common-sense principles.

1. Higher taxes are misguided. They undermine prosperity and finance bigger government.
2. Bailouts also are misguided. They facilitate corruption and encourage moral hazard.
3. And international bureaucracies are misguided. They promote statism and squander money.

So what’s the “perfect storm” of bad policy?

How about when international bureaucracies offers a bailout in exchange for higher taxes?

Here are some very unpleasant details from Reuters about how the International Monetary Fund is working with other international bureaucracies to coerce Cyprus into raising taxes in order to provide a bailout.

International lenders would like Cyprus to raise its corporate tax and introduce a levy on capital gains and a financial transaction tax to ensure it can repay a euro zone bailout it asked for last year, euro zone officials said on Thursday. …One official, briefed on the talks between the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission – known as the Troika – and the new government in Nicosia, said no decisions had yet been taken on any of the taxes.

I’ve already explained that Cyprus got in trouble because government spending rose faster than the ability of the private sector to finance it.

So if the problem is that the burden of government spending is excessive, then how does it make sense to increase the corporate tax burden? To impose a capital gains tax? Or to levy a tax on financial transactions?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t make sense.

This is a very perverse example of Mitchell’s Law, with the pinhead bureaucrats at the IMF and elsewhere misallocating global capital on the condition that Cyprus increase an already onerous tax burden.

One bad policy leading to another bad policy. And it’s happening with our money. Something to think about the next time the fiscal pyromaniacs at the International Monetary Fund ask for additional bailout authority.

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New International Monetary Fund Study Inadvertently Provides Very Strong Evidence against the Value-Added Tax

I’m not a big fan of the International Monetary Fund, largely because the folks in charge oftentimes advocate toxic policies such as bailouts, higher taxes, and currency devaluation.

But there are some top-rate economists working at the IMF, and the bureaucracy has published some good studies about the economic benefits of reducing government spending and others warning that tax increases can be self defeating (by the way, too bad we can’t get the Joint Committee on Taxation to also acknowledge the Laffer Curve).

Now the IMF has a new study about the relationship between economic growth and different types of taxes. Those finding are interesting, and I may even write about them in the next few days, but I want to focus on some amazing data from this research that shows exactly why proponents of limited government should resist the value-added tax.

These charts are taken from page 10 of the IMF study and they depict changes, over the past several decades, for both personal income tax (PIT) revenues and consumption tax revenues, both measured as a share of economic output. The charts are divided to show trends in low-income countries, middle-income countries, and high-income countries.

These are remarkable numbers. They basically show that politicians have been unable to squeeze more money out of the income tax. We don’t know if that’s because of the Laffer Curve, tax competition, electoral resistance, or all of the above. But we can say with considerable confidence that the income tax has not been a money machine over the past 40 years.

I’m not saying it’s a good tax. Far from it. The income tax is unfair. It’s punitive. It’s discriminatory. It’s corrupt. And, when it was first adopted, it did generate a big new pile of revenue for the politicians.

But that was 100 years ago. In recent decades, by contrast, it hasn’t been a piggy bank for statists seeking to expand the burden of government spending.

The data for the VAT and other consumption taxes, by contrast, shows just the opposite. With each passing decade, the VAT burden climbs, and that’s true for nations at all stages of development.

This is one of the reasons why a VAT would be a disaster for the United States. Politicians might make promises about repealing or reducing other taxes in exchange for a VAT, but it is a 99-percent certainty that politicians would pull a bait-and-switch. We’d still be stuck with the awful income tax system and the IRS, but the crooks and clowns in Washington would have a new source of revenue to feed their spending addiction.

Isn’t that wonderful? We’d be taxed when we earn our income (often more than one time), and then taxed again when we spend our income. Just like Europe.

Here’s my video explaining why a value-added tax would be a fiscal disaster.

One final point. I don’t care if you like Mitt Romney or dislike Mitt Romney. But, given his less-than-sound views on the VAT, I want everybody to be prepared to hold his feet to the fire if he happens to prevail on November 6.

P.S. You’ll be delighted to learn that the pampered bureaucrats at the IMF get tax-free salaries, just like their cousins at the OECD and the rest of the international bureaucracies.

P.P.S. I just shared these a few days ago, but if you didn’t get a chance to see them, you can enjoy some good anti-VAT cartoons here, here, and here.

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Europe’s Self-Inflicted Decline: French Taxing, Italian Regulating, Greek Mooching, and IMF Economic Illiteracy

Every day brings more and more evidence that Obamanomics is failing in Europe.  I wrote some “Observations on the European Farce” last week, but the news this morning is even more surreal.

Compared to his foolishness on tax policy, Hollande is a genius when it comes to determining what time it is.

Let’s start with France, where I endorsed the explicit socialist over the implicit socialist precisely because of a morbid desire to see a nation commit faster economic suicide. Well, Monsieur Hollande isn’t disappointing me. Let’s look at some of his new initiatives, as reported by Tax-News.com.

The French Minister responsible for Parliamentary Relations Alain Vidalies has recently conceded that EUR10bn (USD12.7bn) is needed to balance the country’s budget this year, to be achieved notably by means of implementing a number of emergency tax measures. …The government plans to abolish the exemption from social contributions applicable to overtime hours, expected to yield a gain for the state of around EUR3.2bn, and to subject overtime hours to taxation, predicted to realize approximately EUR1.4bn in additional revenues. Other proposed measures include plans to reform the country’s solidarity tax on wealth (ISF), to cap tax breaks at EUR10,000, to impose a 3% tax on dividends and to increase inheritance tax as well as the tax on donations. …French President Hollande announced plans during his election campaign to reform ISF. Holland intends to restore the wealth tax scale of between 0.55% and 1.8%, in place before the former government’s 2011 reform, to be applied on wealth in excess of EUR1.3m. Currently a 0.25% rate is imposed on net taxable wealth in excess of EUR1.3m and 0.5% on net taxable assets above EUR3m.

France already has the highest tax burden of any non-Scandinavian nation, so why not further squeeze the productive sector. That’s bound to boost jobs and competitiveness, right? And more revenue as well!

In reality, the Laffer Curve will kick in because France’s dwindling productive class isn’t going to passively submit as the political jackals start looking for a new meal.

But while France is driving into a fiscal cul-de-sac, Italian politicians have constructed a very impressive maze of red tape, intervention, and regulation. From the Wall Street Journal, here is just a sampling of the idiotic rules that paralyze job creators and entrepreneurs.

Once you hire employee 11, you must submit an annual self-assessment to the national authorities outlining every possible health and safety hazard to which your employees might be subject. These include work-related stress and stress caused by age, gender and racial differences. …Once you hire your 16th employee, national unions can set up shop, and workers may elect their own separate representatives. As your company grows, so does the number of required employee representatives, each of whom is entitled to eight hours of paid leave monthly to fulfill union or works-council duties. …Hire No. 16 also means that your next recruit must qualify as disabled. By the time your firm hires its 51st worker, 7% of the payroll must be handicapped in some way, or else your company owes fees in kind. …Once you hire your 101st employee, you must submit a report every two years on the gender-dynamics within the company. This must include a tabulation of the men and women employed in each production unit, their functions and level within the company, details of their compensation and benefits, and dates and reasons for recruitments, promotions and transfers, as well as the estimated revenue impact. …All of these protections and assurances, along with the bureaucracies that oversee them, subtract 47.6% from the average Italian wage, according to the OECD. …which may explain the temptation to stay small and keep as much of your business as possible off the books. This gray- and black-market accounts for more than a quarter of the Italian economy. It also helps account for unemployment at a 12-year high of 10%, and GDP forecast to contract 1.3% this year.

You won’t be surprised to learn that the unelected Prime Minister of Italy, Mr. Monti, isn’t really trying to fix any of this nonsense and instead is agitating for more bailouts from taxpayers in countries that aren’t quite as corrupt and strangled by red tape.

Monti also is a big supporter of eurobonds, which make a lot of sense if you’re the type of person who likes co-signing loans for your unemployed alcoholic cousin with a gambling addiction.

But let’s not forget our Greek friends, the one from the country that subsidizes pedophiles and requires stool samples from entrepreneurs applying to set up online companies.

The recent elections resulted in a victory for the supposedly conservative party, so what did the new government announce? A flat tax to boost growth? Sweeping deregulation to get rid of the absurd rules that strangle entrepreneurship?

You must be smoking crack to even ask such questions. In addition to whining for further handouts from taxpayers in other nations, the Wall Street Journal reports that the new government has announced that it won’t be pruning any bureaucrats from the country’s bloated government workforce.

Greece’s new three-party coalition government on Thursday ruled out massive public-sector layoffs, a move that could help pacify restive trade unions… The new government’s refusal to slash public payrolls and its demands to renegotiate its loan deal comes just as euro-zone finance ministers meet in Luxembourg to discuss Greece’s troubled overhauls—and possibly weigh a two-year extension the new government is seeking in a bid to ease the terms of the austerity program that has accompanied the bailout. …Cutting the size of the public sector has been a top demand by Greece’s creditors—the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—to reduce costs and help Greece meet its budget-deficit targets needed for the country to get more financing. So far, Greece has laid off just a few hundred workers and failed to implement a so-called labor reserve last year, which foresaw slashing the public sector by 30,000 workers.

Gee, isn’t this just peachy. Best of all, thank to the International Monetary Fund, the rest of us are helping to subsidize these Greek moochers.

And speaking of the IMF, I never realized those overpaid bureaucrats (and they’re also exempt from tax!) are closet comedians. They must be a bunch of jokers, I’ve concluded, because they just released a report on problems in the eurozone without once mentioning excessive government spending or high tax burdens.

The tax-free IMF bureaucrats do claim that “Important actions have been taken,” but they’re talking about bailouts and easy money.

The ECB has lowered policy rates and conducted special liquidity interventions to address immediate bank funding pressures and avert an even more rapid escalation of the crisis.

And even though the problems in Europe are solely the result of bad policies by nations governments, the economic pyromaniacs at the IMF also say that “the crisis now calls for a stronger and more collective effort.”

Absent collective mechanisms to break these adverse feedback loops, the crisis has spilled across euro area countries. Contagion from further intensification of the crisis—including acute stress in funding markets and tensions involving systemically-important banks—would be sizeable globally. And spillovers to neighboring EU economies would be particularly large. A more determined and forceful collective response is needed.

Let’s translate this into plain English: The IMF wants more money from American taxpayers (and other victimized producers elsewhere in the world) to subsidize the types of statist policies that are described above in places such as France, Italy, and Greece.

I’ve previously explained why conspiracy theories are silly, but we’ve gotten to the point where I can forgive people for thinking that politicians and bureaucrats are deliberately trying to turn Europe into some sort of statist Dystopia.

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The Steroid-Pumped Version of “Taxes Are for the Little People”

I’m not a big fan of international bureaucracies, mostly because they always seem to promote bad policy such as higher tax rates.

• The International Monetary Fund is urging higher tax rates and pushing for nations to replace flat tax systems with so-called progressive taxation.
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has embraced Obama’s class-warfare agenda and is pushing for higher tax rates in America.
• The United Nations is working with statists such as George Soros and urging global taxes.
• Even the World Health Organization has adopted some of this activist left-wing mentality, and is pushing global tobacco taxes.

To add insult to injury, the bureaucrats who work at these organizations have created very comfortable lives for themselves while the rest of us pick up the tab, as documented here and here.

But the ultimate insult is that the overpaid and pampered bureaucrats receive tax-free salaries while they jet-set around the world pushing for higher taxes.

Yes, you read correctly. They demand higher taxes for everyone else, but their bloated salaries are exempt!

Here’s some of what the UK-based Guardian just reported about the head of the IMF.

“Taxes for thee, but not for me”

Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged. As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes. …Lagarde, 56, receives a pay and benefits package worth more than American president Barack Obama earns from the United States government, and he pays taxes on it. The same applies to nearly all United Nations employees.

To make matters worse, these globe-trotting bureaucrats have figured out all sorts of ways of padding their pay.

Base salaries range from $46,000 to $80,521. Senior salaries range between $95,394 and $123,033 but these are topped up with adjustments for the cost of living in different countries. A UN worker based in Geneva, for example, will see their base salary increased by 106%, in Bonn by 50.6%, Paris 62% and Peshawar 38.6%. Even in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, one of the poorest areas of the world, a UN employee’s salary will be increased by 53.2%. Other benefits include rent subsidies, dependency allowances for spouses and children, education grants for school-age children and travel and shipping expenses, as well as subsidised medical insurance. For many years critics have complained that IMF, World Bank, and United Nations employees are able to live large at international taxpayers’ expense.

So how do these bureaucrats justify their lavish salaries and gold-plated benefits?

Officials from the various organisations have long maintained that the high salaries are a way of attracting talent from the private sector. In fact, most senior employees are recruited from government posts.

Kudos to the Guardian for exposing this nonsense, particularly the fraudulent claim that lavish compensation packages are need to attract and retain these incompetent bureaucrats.

But let me add to the Guardian’s analysis. In a recent email exchange with several people, I addressed this issue, specifically commenting on whether the head of the IMF, Ms. Lagarde, should get a giant salary because she could earn more money in the private sector. I wrote that there were two responses to this assertion.

1. She has genuine skills as a wealth creator. In which case, we should force her out of the IMF as soon as possible so her talents can be used productively rather than destructively.

2. She can get big bucks by trading on her connections and entering the world of corporatism. Work for KPMG, or the Carlyle Group, or some other entity that specializes in getting favorable deals for the elite. That’s not the private sector.

In either case, her salary in her current position should be zero. Unless we think she should be paid the value of her marginal product, in which case she probably owes the world’s taxpayers several hundred billion dollars.

In other words, it doesn’t matter whether Ms. Largarde’s ability to earn lots of money is the result of genuine ability or cronyism. Since the IMF is pursuing bad policy, her value in that position is below zero.

My Cato colleague Richard Rahn was correct when he wrote that it is the ultimate hypocrisy for tax-free bureaucrats to lobby for higher taxes on the rest of us.

And that’s why defunding these parasitic international bureaucracies is not just good fiscal policy and good economic policy, it’s also the morally just policy.

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In a Battle Between the IMF and Greece, I Want Both Sides to Lose

I don’t like the international bureaucrats at the IMF, and I don’t like the corrupt politicians of Greece, so for whom do I cheer if there’s a fight between those two groups?

Ideally, both sides will lose (which is also my view of the European fight between Keynesians and tax increasers).

You’ll understand when you read about the recent remarks by Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund. Here’s what the UK-based Guardian reported.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde’s uncompromising description of Greeks as rampant tax-dodgers has provoked a furious reaction in Athens less than a month before the crisis-hit country heads to the polls. With Greece mired in ever-worsening recession, with cutbacks and tax rises, the IMF managing director was rounded on by almost the entire political establishment. In an interview with the Guardian, Lagarde said she had more sympathy for victims of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa than Greeks hit by the economic crisis. “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.” Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek socialist leader, who met Lagarde several times as finance minister, accused her of “insulting” Greeks. “Nobody has the right to humiliate the Greek people during the crisis, and I say this today specifically addressing Ms Lagarde … who with her stance insulted the Greek people.”

So what should we think of this fight?

Well, I agree with Lagarde that the people of sub-Saharan Africa are more deserving of sympathy. After all, the Greek people repeatedly voted to steal money from their fellow citizens by using the coercive power of government, so it’s hard to feel much sympathy for people who thought that scam could continue indefinitely.

Though, to be fair, the people in sub-Saharan Africa would probably make the same venal choices if they had democracy.

Top IMF Moocher

On the other hand, I am nauseated by Lagarde’s comments about tax evasion. She is one of the world’s biggest leeches, with annual compensation of more than $550,000 that is diverted from the productive sector of the economy. And, adding insult to injury, her bloated salary is tax free. So we have the grotesque spectacle of a pampered international bureaucrat whining and moaning that ordinary people aren’t paying enough tax.

Keep in mind, by the way, that the tax burden in Greece is more than 40 percent of economic output (see annex table 26), which (at least to normal people) shows that the problems is that the Greek government is spending far too much.

Leading Greek Kleptocrat

Then we have the sniveling comments of Greece’s former socialist finance minister, who says the Greek people have been “insulted.” Well, they should be insulted. And mocked. And berated. After all, these are the people who voted for one kleptocrat government after another.

These are the people who thought it was a good idea to elect governments that made insane decisions such as choosing to subsidize pedophiles and imposing a regulatory requirement to collect stool samples from entrepreneurs setting up online companies.

I think “a pox on both your houses” was a line in one of Shakespeare’s plays. But wherever it comes from, it sums up my view of this spat between the IMF and Greece. The only good decision for the United States would be to back away and not be involved. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration wants American taxpayers on the hook for the reckless overspending of foreign politicians.

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Saying No to Additional IMF Bailout Money Should Be a Minimum Test for the GOP

In a grand Washington tradition, I periodically make imperious demands. In the past year or two, I’ve issued the following ultimatums to the GOP.

o No tax increases, since more money for Washington will encourage a bigger burden of government and undermine prosperity.

o Reform the biased number-crunching methodology at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation.

o No more money from American taxpayers to subsidize the left-wing bureaucrats at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

I don’t actually expect any politicians to pay attention when I make these demands, of course, but I am highlighting issues that send a signal about whether Republicans actually learned any lessons after getting shellacked in 2006 and 2008.

So far, they’re holding reasonably firm on the tax issue. They don’t have control over the CBO and JCT thanks to Harry Reid, so we’ll give them a pass on that topic. And we’ll see later this year whether they agree to squander another $100 million on the OECD.

Well, here’s another test to see whether the GOP is on the side of taxpayers or the establishment. The Obama Administration has agreed that the fiscal pyromaniacs at the International Monetary Fun should have more money and power to provide more and bigger bailouts.

Here are some relevant parts of a Washington Post story.

…a brewing election year fight with congressional Republicans…could restrict the IMF’s finances at a time when agency officials say they need a substantial boost to protect the world economy. The dispute centers on Republican opposition to increasing the United States’ financial contributions to the agency, reflecting anger over IMF rescue programs in Europe that some GOP lawmakers argue have become too expensive and have put U.S. taxpayers at risk. …opposition is growing to a permanent increase in U.S. government support for the IMF, as well as to a $100 billion credit line the United States provided in 2009 as part of an international move to help the IMF respond to the global financial crisis. The IMF has been dipping into that credit line for emergency loans to Portugal and elsewhere… Planned changes at the IMF, which would shift seats on the fund’s governing board from Europe to the developing world, cannot proceed without congressional approval. For practical purposes, neither can a related doubling, from $370 billion to $740 billion, in the total permanent contribution that IMF members make to support the agency.

As you can see from the excerpt, Republicans in the House of Representatives have the ability to stop this global boondoggle. The interesting question, though, is whether they defend the interests of ordinary people or whether they cater to the whims of the political elite.

By the way, I’m irked by the Post’s biased presentation. They refer to IMF “rescue programs,” yet all the evidence seems to suggest that the international bureaucracy is simply making the debt bubble bigger. We certainly don’t see any evidence that problems are getting solved. Greece is still in trouble, as are the other nations that stuck their hands in Uncle Sam’s pocket.

But that could be excused as a bit of sloppy reporting. Here’s a part of the story that is hopelessly biased.

The potential for a stalemate over the issue in the United States has the IMF and other international officials worried that it could put broader agency reform efforts at risk. IMF officials say that to backstop the global economy they need about $500 billion in addition to the increase in permanent contributions.

Since when is it appropriate to use the term “reform efforts” to describe policies that subsidize moral hazard and reward profligacy? And how is it accurate to say that IMF actions “backstop the global economy” when the bureaucrats don’t seem to achieve anything other than encouraging more debt?

Congresswoman Rodgers, Defending Taxpayers

But this isn’t a post about media bias, even though I sometimes can’t resist pointing out sloppy or dishonest journalism. Let’s get back to the main point. Giving the IMF more resources would be like giving the keys to a liquor store to a bunch of alcoholics.

Republicans have the ability to stop this raid on the Treasury by saying no. What they decide will reveal a lot about whether they’re still part of the problem.

Some GOPers in the House, such as Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, already are fighting against expanded bailout money for the IMF. The real key, though, will be whether the Republican leadership does the right thing.

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If Even the International Monetary Fund Acknowledges the Laffer Curve, Why Doesn’t Obama Realize that Higher Tax Rates are All Pain and No Gain?

I speculated last year that the political elite finally might be realizing that higher tax rates are not the solution to Greece’s fiscal situation.

Simply stated, you can only squeeze so much blood out of a stone, and pushing tax rates higher cripples growth and drives more people into the underground economy.

Well, it turns out that even the International Monetary Fund agrees with me. Here’s what the IMF said in its latest analysis about the Greek fiscal situation.

…further progress in reducing the deficit is going to be hard without underlying structural fiscal reforms. The fiscal deficit is now expected to be 9 percent this year, against the program target of 7½ percent. “One of the things we have seen in 2011 is that we have reached the limit of what can be achieved through increasing taxes,” Thomsen said. “Any further measures, if needed, should be on the expenditure side.

This is a remarkable admission. The IMF, for all intents and purposes, is acknowledging the Laffer Curve. At some point, tax rates become so punitive that the government collects less revenue.

This is a simple and common-sense observation, as explained in this video.

Unfortunately, even though the IMF now recognizes reality, the same can’t be said about the Obama Administration.

The President has proposed higher tax rates in his recent budget and it seems he can’t make a speech without making a class-warfare argument for penalizing producers, investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.

Yet if you compare American tax rates and Greek tax rates, it seems that the IMF’s lesson also applies in the United States.

The top tax in Greece is 45 percent, which is higher than the 35 percent top rate in America. But this doesn’t count the impact of state income taxes, which add an average of about five percentage points to the burden. Or the Medicare payroll tax, which boosts the rate by another 2.9 percentage points.

So Obama’s proposed 4.6 percentage point hike in the top tax rate almost certainly would mean a higher tax burden in the United States.

Even more worrisome, the U.S. tax rates on dividends and capital gains already are higher than the equivalent rates in Greece. Yet Obama wants to boost double taxation on these forms of retained earnings and distributed earnings.

But there are important cultural differences between the United States and Greece, so there’s no reason to think that the revenue-maximizing tax rates in both nations are the same (by the way, policy makers should strive for growth-maximizing tax rates, not the rates that generate the most money).

That’s why I wrote about the U.S.-specific evidence from the 1980s, which shows that rich people paid much more to the IRS when tax rates were slashed from 70 percent to 28 percent.

But all this analysis may miss the point. Why is the President willing to raise tax rates even if the economy suffers enough damage that the Treasury doesn’t collect any revenue? And if you’re wondering why I might ask such a crazy question, watch this video – especially beginning about the 4:30 mark.

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What’s the Difference between a Libertarian, a Supply-Sider, a Keynesian, and an IMF Bureaucrat?

I realize the title of this post sounds like the beginning of a joke, along the lines of “A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar…”, but this is a serious topic.

A big problem in fiscal debates is that people can’t even agree on what they mean by certain words. For instance, what’s the definition of austerity? Is it budget cuts, higher taxes, or both? Why are people saying the United Kingdom is practicing austerity, when the burden of government spending is going up?

Or how do we define responsible fiscal policy? Should politicians try to balance budgets, or should they shrink the burden of government? Is it reasonable for some people to call Obama a conservative because he wants higher taxes and claims the money would be used to reduce red ink?

I grapple with some of these questions in this appearance on Fox Business News.

But I’m not happy with my performance, largely because there needs to be a simple way of categorizing the various approaches to fiscal policy. So that’s what I’ve done in this Table. This is a first draft, so I welcome suggestions.

I’m serious about looking for input, For instance, I would like to come up with some way to describe Bushonomics without sullying the name of supply-side economics.

But perhaps I am just sensitive to that issue because supply-side economists tend to be serious and sober people who favor smaller government, but some of the politicians associated with supply-side economics – such as Jack Kemp – have been unapologetic big spenders.

I’m also unhappy with the division between IMFers and Keynesians, which is strange because it seems like half of my time is devoted to battling statists who argue for more government spending and the other half is consumed by fights against proponents of higher taxes.

What makes this so frustrating, though, is that Keynesians and IMFers are usually the same people, even though the philosophies are supposedly inconsistent.

I suspect that all they really want is bigger government, and they use any sign of weakness to argue for more spending, and then they quickly pivot and ask for higher taxes because of red ink. The biased analysis of the Congressional Budget Office is a good example.

The right approach, needless to say, is libertarianism. Small government and low tax rates are the pro-growth, pro-freedom recipe. That’s the one part of the Table that’s right on the mark.

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Should the Fiscal Pyromaniacs at the IMF Get another $500 Billion so They Can Advocate Keynesian Spending and Class-Warfare Tax Hikes?

Perhaps the title of this post is a bit unfair since the International Monetary Fund is good on some issues, such as reducing subsidies. And some of the economists at the IMF even produce good research.

But I can’t help but get agitated that this behemoth global bureaucracy wants more money when it has a dismal track record of promoting, enabling, and subsidizing bigger government.

Here’s a brief blurb from the Wall Street Journal, which shares my skepticism.

The IMF’s Christine Lagarde delivered a speech in Berlin Monday warning that, without dramatic action, the world risked another Great Depression. …”We estimate a global potential financing need of $1 trillion,” she said. “To play its part, the IMF would aim to raise up to $500 billion in additional lending resources.” …Perhaps an IMF managing director with sound ideas about what makes an economy grow might deserve a raise. The first thing such a director would demand would be to cut the Fund’s size in half, not double it.

The WSJ’s editors are right to criticize the IMF. The folks in charge at the international bureaucracy, depending on the circumstances, have a nasty habit of supporting Keynesian spending and class-warfare tax hikes.

Let’s look at two very recent news reports to prove this point.

Our first example is from Europe, where there’s a discussion of how to address the fiscal crisis. Remarkably, the IMF has staked out a position to the left of Germany, arguing that more government spending will boost growth in Europe. Consider these excerpts from a Washington Post article.

Germany, the economic engine of Europe, is afraid it could get stuck paying much of the cost to bail out its weaker European neighbors. It is pushing instead for budget cuts, which the IMF says could weaken growth further and undermine market confidence. The IMF is already lending to the region’s bailout fund and has a lead role in monitoring the progress that nations such as Greece make in reducing their government deficits. Germany, meanwhile, is also a large contributor to the bailout fund. …If Europe doesn’t take several steps recommended by the IMF, such as reducing its emphasis on budget cuts, the 17 nations that share the euro could contract at a much faster pace, the fund said. That could possibly plunge the rest of the world into recession.

This is remarkable. One would think that the past three years have proven, once and for all, that Keynesian spending is a sedative rather than a stimulus. Yet the IMF thinks recessions are caused by smaller government.

We have another story that is equally upsetting. IMF bureaucrats get tax-free salaries, yet they frequently urge governments to impose higher taxes. And they have a very troubling habit of undermining tax reform.

Here’s a blurb from a Bloomberg report.

The International Monetary Fund may require Hungary to change its flat personal income tax as part of a bailout agreement, according to a person familiar with the Washington-based lender’s preparations for the talks. The flat tax will be an important part in any program discussion, said the person, who declined to be identified because official talks haven’t started. The IMF is in general opposed to flat-tax systems.

I’ll confess that I’m not overly sympathetic to Hungary’s plight. The government is in a mess because it keeps overspending.

But if the IMF is going to foolishly provide a bailout, wouldn’t it be better if the bureaucrats made the money contingent on implementing good policy rather than bad policy?

Unfortunately, the IMF has a bad track record on tax reform, as I’m constantly reminded when talking to officials in Eastern Europe. Indeed, one of my early posts on this blog was about the IMF’s attempt to sabotage the Latvian flat tax.

People have a right to be statist, but the question we have to decide is whether American taxpayers should subsidize that destructive mindset. Not surprisingly, I say no. Indeed, the IMF may even be worse than the OECD, another international bureaucracy that promotes a statist agenda.

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Amusing Cartoon Asks Whether American Taxpayers Should Bail Out Europe’s Welfare States

There’s a rather simple solution to Europe’s fiscal crisis, but politicians will never do the right thing unless every other option is exhausted.

That’s why American taxpayers should not be involved in any sort of European bailout, either directly or indirectly.

This cartoon captures my sentiment.

At the risk of being picky, however, I would replace “Fed” with “USA/IMF” or something like that.

As I explained a few days ago, the Federal Reserve’s recent announcement that it will provide dollar liquidity to Europe is not necessarily objectionable. After all, the Europeans have to pay us back if they borrow dollars, with interest, at current exchange rates.

Yes, I worry European politicians may interpret the Fed’s actions as a signal that they can defer long-overdue reforms, and I also worry that it might be a precursor for easy-money policies in the future.

But the real threat to American taxpayers is that the International Monetary Fund may provide more bailouts to Europe.

I keep explaining that the only solution is for Europe’s welfare states to copy the Baltic nations and actually cut spending, but that will never happen if European politicians think that they can get an IMF handout (and thus shift some of their bad fiscal policy onto the backs of American taxpayers).

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El Salvador, Greece, and American Tax Dollars: The Destructive Impact of the IMF

The Europeans have just agreed to another bailout for Greece. That’s the bad news.

The good news is…well, there is no good news. Sarkozy, Merkel, and the other statists have once again failed to do the right thing and instead have decided to throw good money after bad and dig the debt hole even deeper.

But there is worse news. The IMF is financing part of the bailout and American taxpayers are “shareholders” in the IMF.

In other words, I’m helping to reward bad behavior and misallocate global capital. This doesn’t make me very happy – especially since the White House supports this misguided approach.

But this is business-as-usual for the IMF, and here’s a first-hand example.

I’m in El Salvador where I just finished two days of speeches, meetings, and interviews to discuss how the country should deal with its fiscal imbalance.

Discussing Mitchell's Golden Rule in El Salvador

My message is simple. El Salvador should reject tax hikes and instead put government on a diet by capping annual spending growth so the budget grows by 1 percent or 2 percent annually.

Ever single reporter responded by saying some variant of “but the IMF says we need to raise taxes.”

During the first interview, I simply said the IMF was wrong. During the second interview, I said El Salvador should refuse to let IMF bureaucrats in the country. After I heard the same IMF message the third time, I suggested shooting down any flight carrying IMF bureaucrats and their snake-oil economic advice.

The last comment was a joke, of course, but it does raise a fundamental question. Why are American taxpayers subsidizing an international bureaucracy that runs around the world urging higher taxes and bailouts?!?

To be fair, the IMF usually includes some good advice in their reports. If you read the fine print, the bureaucrats often recommend reductions in subsidies, red tape, government payrolls, and handouts.

But if you give politicians in any country a set of options, and higher taxes and/or bailouts are on the list, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that the good reforms will get ignored while the bad policies will be adopted.

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No More Bailouts for the IMF

I’m not an expert on addiction, but it’s probably safe to assume that one would never treat an alcoholic by giving him more booze. Or treat an addict by giving him more drugs.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m opposed to bailouts. I’m against bailing out banks. I’m against bailing out car companies. I’m against bailing out governments.

And I’m against bailing out international bureaucracies that are running short on cash because they’ve been busy engaging in bailouts, which is the point I make in this Fox News interview.

I wish there was more time in the interview to expand on the issue of corrupt investors and financial institutions that love to make big profits when a bubble is expanding, but want handouts, subsidies, and bailouts when a bubble bursts.

This is why short-term blips in the stock market are not necessarily a good indicator of the economy’s long-run health.

Another point worth making is that failure is (or should be) part of the market process. One of my favorite lines, which I should have used in the interview, is that “capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell.”

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Hell No, American Taxpayers Should Not Bail out the IMF

This is getting surreal. We now have layers of bailouts around the world.

Different nations are doing their own bailouts. On top of that, the Europeans have set up something called the European Financial Stability Facility, which does bailouts across the continent. And then there’s the International Monetary Fund, doing bailouts on a global basis. (and we’re not even counting the indirect bailouts from the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank)

So how is this system working? Well, if you understand the principle of moral hazard, you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s a big flop. Giving bailouts is like trying to cure an alcoholic with more booze.

But the problems are much deeper than promoting bad behavior. Bailouts also undermine growth by misallocating capital. And, most ominously, they create even bigger problems down the road.

Which is now what’s happening. The queen bureaucracy of bailouts, the IMF, may run out of bailout money, and presumably will demand more handouts from member nations – with the United States on the hook for providing the biggest share. Here’s a blurb from the story in the Daily Telegraph.

The head of the IMF has warned that its $384bn (£248bn) war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by troubled states.In a document distributed to the IMF steering committee at the weekend, Ms Lagarde said: “The fund’s credibility, and hence effectiveness, rests on its perceived capacity to cope with worst-casescenarios. Our lending capacity of almost $400bn looks comfortable today, but pales in comparison with the potential financing needs of vulnerable countries and crisis bystanders.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, the IMF should not get any more money. This is one of those moments for which the phrase “Hell No!” was invented.

The time has come to stop the cycle of bailouts. As Greece has demonstrated, bailouts simply give politicians some breathing room to postpone necessary reforms.

But it’s not just that bailouts encourage bad behavior in the public sector. They also promote moral hazard, leading financial institutions to make excessively risky loans because of an expectation that taxpayers will be coerced into making up any losses.

To understand why bailouts and moral hazard are so misguided, here’s a video narrated by Nicole Neily of the Independent Women’s Forum.

The video largely focuses on American policy issues such as Fannie, Freddie, and TARP, but the principles apply to all bailouts.

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Should the Greeks Be Able to “Loot and Mooch Their Way Through Life”?

In a recent post, I explained some of the reasons why Greece should not get another bailout. I cover some of the same points in this Bloomberg interview, but my favorite part is when I state that it’s time for the Greek people to realize “they can’t loot and mooch their way through life.”

I also pontificate about the appointment of another pro-welfare state French politician to head the IMF. Not surprisingly, I’m not sanguine about the prospects.

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Should American Taxpayers Finance another Big Fat Greek Bailout?

The notion that American taxpayers are about to subsidize another Greek bailout (via the Keystone Cops at the IMF) is way beyond economically foolish. It is also morally offensive.

To turn Winston Churchill’s famous quote upside down: “Never have so many paid so much to subsidize such an undeserving few.”

Let’s start with a few facts:

o Greece’s GDP is roughly equal to the GDP of Maryland.

o Greece’s population is roughly equal to the population of Ohio.

o Despite that small size, in both terms of population and economic output, Greece already has received a bailout of about $150 billion (actual amount fluctuates with the exchange rate).

o Don’t forget the indirect bailout resulting from purchases of Greek government bonds by the European Central Bank.

o Now Greece is angling for another bailout of about $150 billion.

Is there any possible justification for throwing good money after bad with another bailout. Well, if you’re a politician from Germany or France and your big banks (i.e., some of your major campaign contributors) foolishly bought lots of government bonds from Greece, the answer might be yes. After all, screwing taxpayers to benefit insiders is a longstanding tradition in Europe.

But from a taxpayer perspective, either in Europe or the United States, the answer is no. Or, to be more technical and scientific, the answer is “Hell no, are you friggin’ out of your mind?!?”

Consider these fun facts from a recent column by John Lott and then decide whether the corrupt politicians of Greece (and the special interest groups that receive handouts and subsidies from the Greek government) deserve to have their hands in the pockets of American taxpayers.

Despite Greece’s promises, government spending is up over last year’s already bloated levels, the deficit is bigger than ever, and it has utterly failed to meet the promised sell-off of some government assets. Not a single public bureaucrat has been laid off so far. …Greece can pay off €300 of the €347 billion debt by selling off shares the government owns in publicly traded companies and much of its real estate holdings. The government owns stock in casinos, hotels, resorts, railways, docks, as well as utilities providing electricity and water. But Greek unions fiercely oppose even partial privatizations. Rolling blackouts are promised this week to dissuade the government from selling of even 17 percent of its stake in the Public Power Corporation. …Greeks apparently believe that they have Europe and the world over a barrel, that they can make the rest of the world pay their bills by threatening to default. Greece’s default would be painful for everyone, but for Europe and the United States, indeed for the world, the alternative would be even worse. If politicians in Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other countries think that their bills will be picked up by taxpayers in other countries, they won’t control their spending and they won’t sell off assets to pay off these debts. Countries such as Greece have to be convinced that they will bear a real cost if they don’t fix their financial houses while they still have the assets to cover their debts. …The real problem is the incentives we are giving to other countries. We have to make sure that “Kicking the can down the road” isn’t an option.

Just for good measure, here are a few more interesting factoids in a Wall Street Journal column by Holman Jenkins.

[Greece is] one of the most corrupt, crony-ridden, patronage-ridden, inefficient, silly economies in Christendom. …The state railroad maintains a payroll four times larger than its ticket sales. When a military officer dies, his pension continues for his unwed daughter as long as she remains unwed. Various workers are allowed to retire with a full state pension at age 45.

To be blunt, Greek politicians have miserably failed. Wait, that’s not right. You can’t say someone has failed when they haven’t even tried. Let’s be more accurate and say that Greek politicians have succeeded. They have scammed money from taxpayers in other nations to prop up a venal and corrupt system of patronage and spoils. Sure, they’ve made a few cosmetic changes and trimmed around the edges, but handouts from abroad have enabled them to perpetuate a bloated state. And now they’re using a perverse form of blackmail (aided and abetted by big banks) to seek even more money.

Let’s now re-ask the earlier question: Should American taxpayer finance the corrupt big-government policies of Greece?

Or perhaps we should think like economists, so let’s rephrase the question: Should we misallocate capital so that funds are diverted from private investment to corrupt Greek politicians?

Or maybe we should think like parents who have to worry about spoiling a child and the signal that sends to the other kids, so let’s ask the question this way: Should we encourage bad behavior in Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc, by giving another bailout to Greece’s corrupt politicians?

Or should we think about this issue from the perspective of addiction counselors and rephrase the question: Should we reward self-destructive behavior by providing more money to corrupt political elites in Greece?

Or how about we think like moral human beings, and ask the real question: Should we take money from people who earned it and give it to people who think they are entitled to live at the expense of others?

Since we paraphrased Churchill earlier, let’s answer these questions by butchering Shakespeare: “A bailout from every angle would smell to high Heaven.”

I wrote back in February of 2010 that a Greek bailout would be a mistake and every development since that time has confirmed that initial commentary.

But that doesn’t matter. Politicians have a different way of looking at things. They look at a policy and wonder whether it increases their power and generates campaign contributions. And when you understand their motives, you begin to realize why they will answer yes to the previous set of questions.

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The IMF: An Equal-Opportunity Purveyor of Bad Advice

As a general rule, the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund are not awful people or fire-breathing leftists. But they are voices for the establishment. And, at the upper levels, IMF staff seem overly solicitous of the views of the big nations, which means that they are indirectly attentive to interest groups (such as big banks) that have political power in those big nations.

This helps explain why the IMF is so intent on providing bailouts to Greece when it would be far better in the long run to cut the country loose and force the Greek people to realize that there is not a never-ending supply of subsidies to support statism.

But it’s not just in Greece where the IMF peddles bad policy. I wrote back in 2009 about the IMF’s efforts to repeal the flat tax in Latvia. And I’ve posted about the IMF’s support for anti-tax competition schemes that would enable bigger government.

I guess we need to give the bureaucrats credit for being consistent. The IMF is now pushing Albania to increase its flat tax rate. Here’s an excerpt from the Albanianeconomy.com website.

“The flat tax can be raised to 12-15 per cent, [from the current 10 per cent] as a way to cut the deficit and the stock of public debt,” IMF representative Gerwin Bell said on Thursday in a joint press conference with Albania’s Minister of Finance Ridvan Bode and the Governor of Albania’s Central Bank, Ardian Fullani.

To reiterate my earlier point, however, the IMF produces muddled advice, not bad advice. The bureaucrats also are recommending some budgetary restraint for Albania. The problem, of course, is that politicians often accept the suggestions for higher taxes and never bother with fiscal restraint. Indeed, IMF bailout funds for places such as Greece are substitutes for fiscal restraint.

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IMF Recommendation for Europe: Double Down on the Approach that Caused the Sovereign Debt Crisis

Many European nations face a sovereign debt crisis because of excessive spending caused by too much redistribution. The obvious – and only – solution to this crisis is to reverse the policies that caused the problem.

So take a wild guess about what the International Monetary Fund recommended: Did the international bureaucracy recommend that nations such as Greece and Portugal impose serious fiscal discipline, such as the spending freezes that worked so successfully in New Zealand and Canada in the 1990s?

Of course not. That would make sense. Instead, the IMF is urging more centralization and redistribution in order to facilitate “economic governance” and “fiscal transfers.”

I’m not a fan on international bureaucracies, and I wasn’t expecting good advice, but even I’m stunned. Here are some excerpts from a story in the EU Observer.

The International Monetary Fund has bluntly warned the European Union…it must integrate faster and more deeply in order to stop a global disaster. …Saying Europe is at a “crossroads”, the IMF’s acting director, John Lipsky, in Luxembourg for a meeting with EU finance ministers, declared: “The euro area needs to strengthen economic governance and may need to be more intrusive in terms of national structures.” …the IMF said that still “more economic and financial integration” and EU intervention in national economies is necessary. …Specifically, the report mentioned that “without political union” and fiscal transfers, “stronger governance of the euro area is indispensable.”

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International Bureaucrats: Riding the Gravy Train at Taxpayer Expense

I’ve remarked before about how I get especially upset when well-to-do people figure out ways of ripping off taxpayers. Redistribution from rich to poor is not a good idea, but it is far more offensive when the coercive power of government is used to transfer money from ordinary people to the elite.

A good (perhaps “reprehensible” would be a better word to use) example if the scam created by international bureaucracies. The folks who work for entities such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, and Organization for Economic Cooperation get wildly excessive compensation packages. To add insult to injury, their income is tax free!

Here are some excerpts from a Richard Pollack column at Pajamas Media.

At the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and at the IMF, you find extravagantly paid men and women who masquerade as anti-poverty fighters for the Third World. As one World Bank vice president said upon his resignation: “Poverty reduction is the last thing on most World Bank bureaucrats’ minds.” These global institutions are supposed to act as non-profits, but big salaries and big perks rule as the norm. And you’re paying for them: as the largest single contributor, American taxpayers pick up the tab. By now everyone knows about DSK’s extravagant $420,000 employment agreement that included an additional $73,000 for living expenses — a provision explained thusly by the IMF: “To enable you to maintain … a scale of living appropriate to your position.” …A PJM survey found that a common annual compensation package for senior management at the anti-poverty banks exceeds $500,000 — tax-free. World Bank President Robert Zoellick currently receives $441,980 in base salary and $284,500 in other benefits. Strauss-Kahn’s deputy, John Lipsky, receives $384,000 in base salary plus “living allowances.” …Ten of Zoellick’s deputies receive tax-free base pay of $321,00 to $347,000, plus enjoy an additional $210,000 in benefits. Even mid-level World Bank employees earn well into six digits: the average salary for a professional manager is $181,000, plus $97,000 in benefits. A senior adviser receives on average $238,000 plus $127,000 in benefits. A vice president receives $286,000 plus $153,000 in benefits. The biggest hidden benefits are the off-the-book perks called “living allowances.” These perks can nearly double a stated salary. Of the 2,600 IMF and 10,000 World Bank full-time employees, all receive some form of supplemental living allowances in addition to their base pay. These include home leave grants, dependent allowances, travel perks, and education “grants” for their children to attend private schools. In addition, they offer generous pensions and health insurance policies. According to a U.S. General Accounting Office study, the average cost for these additional perks added $197,300 per employee cost beyond their base pay in 1994 dollars.

The column doesn’t mention my “favorite” international bureaucracy, which is the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD’s budget is small compared to some of the other parasitic bodies mentioned in the column, but this video explains how big-government policies are being financed with the $100 million-plus of American tax dollars sent to France to subsidize the OECD.

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Punish the French Rapist, but the Real Target Should Be the IMF

I certainly take second place to nobody in my utter contempt for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund. Who knew that forcing yourself (allegedly) on women could earn you a reputation as “the Great Seducer”? I guess my failure to understand means I’m just a backwards and provincial American.

I’m also a bit old-fashioned in my approach to economics. I don’t think people should use the coercive power of government take what they haven’t earned. That’s why I hold international bureaucracies in low esteem. Most of my efforts have focused on the OECD, a Paris-based (gee, what a surprise) bureaucracy that squanders American tax dollars on statist schemes such as their ongoing anti-tax competition campaign that persecutes countries with low tax rates.

But I’m also a big believer in kicking an enemy while he’s vulnerable, so let’s shift to the International Monetary Fund. Here are some passages from a new column by my Cato colleague Doug Bandow. He points out that the IMF has a horrible track record of promoting and facilitating big government.

…the rape charges against him symbolize the IMF: an institution of privilege that routinely acts to the disadvantage of the vulnerable. The IMF’s founding purpose vanished when the system of fixed exchange rates collapsed in the early 1970s. But instead of closing up shop (no jobs for international bureaucrats in that!), the IMF switched to promoting development. That is, it became a welfare program for Third World governments (and, more recently, for Eastern Europe and even Greece). The IMF spent decades subsidizing the world’s economic basket cases. Few, if any, advanced because of its programs. …the agency often got “wise” wrong. It often focused on narrow accounting data, with perverse consequences — such as forcing governments to raise taxes rather than cut spending. …Years ago, economist John Williamson pointed to the problem of the IMF feeling pressure “to lend money in order to justify having it.” Indeed, the IMF seems to measure success by making loans. As a result, its cash often acted as a general subsidy for collectivist economic policies. (Williamson once defended the organization against the criticism that it was too market-oriented by pointing to its loans to several unreconstructed communist states.) Indeed, the agency proudly disclaimed any bias against collectivist systems, pointing to “programs in all types of economies” which had “accommodated such nonmarket devices as production controls, administered prices and subsidies.” It sometimes seems to favor the most perverse policies. For instance, in the IMF’s first 40 years, India collected more money from it than any other developing state — at a time when India was pursuing a Soviet-style industrialization program.

Ironically, some people are arguing that it is unfortunate that Strauss-Kahn is in jail at such a critical time, with several European welfare states teetering on the edge of default.

But this is actually very good news. If there is any chance of saving Europe, it will be precisely because bailouts stop and nations are forced to finally fix the awful big-government policies that have crippled growth and bloated budgets, thus leading to fiscal crises. Doug makes this essential point in the conclusion to his column, and also makes the key argument that it’s time to stop the handouts to this corrupt and wasteful bureaucracy.

The IMF’s loans have often likely postponed reform — allowing governments to keep going without making the tough changes that lead to long-term growth. That appears to be happening in Greece now — where the Fund has pushed more lending and a bigger bail-out (to the consternation of Germany, which is picking up much of the bill). Strauss-Kahn may finally have done a true public service by focusing attention on the IMF. With America drowning in red ink, Washington should stop throwing good money at this pernicious institution.

P.S. For those who want to hoist Europeans on their own petard, Tessa Berenson has a great little column at the Frum Forum pointing out how many of the political elite on the other side of the Atlantic thought it was horrible and inexcusable when an American head of the World Bank arranged for a pay raise for his girlfriend. The Europeans were right at the time, but they now turn a blind eye at a far more odious episode today.

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Fun Times at the IMF: Rape Taxpayers, then Hotel Maids

Let’s start with a giant disclaimer that the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is accused of forcibly sodomizing a hotel maid and we have no idea whether it’s true. There are even rumors that this is a plot hatched by Nikolas Sarkozy to cripple a potential rival in advance of next year’s French presidential election.

I suppose I could make a comment here about the arrogance of the political class and their view that they’re above the law.

But I’m such a fiscal policy dork that I’m especially outraged by the fact that Mr. Strauss-Kahn gets a gigantic tax-free salary. And then, to add insult to injury, he was staying in a hotel room that costs $3,000 per night!

I rapped Congressman Ron Paul across the knuckles for his disapproval of the Osama bin Laden raid, but I give him kudos for drawing the right conclusion about this sordid story. Here are some excerpts from a Fox News report.

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate told “Fox News Sunday” that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was pulled off an Air France flight moments before take-off from New York Saturday and arrested on charges of a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment, said the whole course of events “is a bit ironic.” Paul, who makes no secret about his disgust of IMF policies, said Strauss-Kahn demonstrates why the Fund has problems. “These are the kind of people that are running the IMF and we want to turn the world finances and the control of the money supply to them,” Paul said. “That should awaken everybody to the fact that they ought to look into the IMF and find out why we shouldn’t be sacrificing more sovereignty to an organization like that and an individual like he was.”

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Opulent Conditions for International Bureaucrats While Taxpayers Struggle

The International Monetary Fund is a great place to work – at least for those who don’t feel guilty about getting extravagant salaries from taxpayers. And what do IMF bureaucrats do for the money we pay them (American taxpayers finance the biggest share of the bureaucracy’s expenses)?

Many of them jet around the world in business class, stay at first-class hotels, and tell nations to raise taxes and devalue their currencies. And to add insult to injury, they specialize in misallocating global saving and investment by bailing out irresponsible nations.

This is not to say the bureaucrats are always wrong. While the IMF often is bad on taxes and monetary policy, the bureaucrats sometimes give good advice on trade, regulation, and government spending.

But even when they give good advice, that doesn’t justify their big salaries (which are tax-free, by the way). The real question, though, is whether the IMF should even exist – especially when the bureaucracy more often than not is on the wrong side of key public policy issues.

Unfortunately, instead of being cut back or phased out, the IMF is getting even bigger. While the rest of us are having to tighten our belts, the bureaucrats at the IMF are having fun spending our money. The gold-plated international bureaucracy now wants to spend big bucks to upgrade it already lavish headquarters in Washington. Here’s a blurb from the UK-based Guardian.

…the International Monetary Fund’s bureaucrats plan to concentrate on a matter closer to home in the new year – sprucing up their offices in downtown Washington DC. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the fund’s managing director, quietly announced last week that he would be asking permission from the organisation’s cash-strapped member states to refurbish its main headquarters building. …Pressure groups greeted the news with scepticism, pointing out that eight years ago the fund spent $150m on a second building, complete with external waterfall, after saying its original site – known as HQ1 – was no longer big enough for its staff of highly-paid international officials.They said the fund was now flush with cash after selling some of its stock of gold and extracting fees and interest payments from troubled countries such as Ireland and Greece. …Peter Chowla, programme manager at the Bretton Woods Project, a think tank that monitors the activities of the IMF and the World Bank, said: “After a nice financial crisis, the IMF’s balance sheet is looking very health – lots of interest to pour in from Greece and Ireland and commitment fees on money never even lent to Colombia, Mexico and Poland. So the fund is thinking about spending some of the proceeds on remodelling its headquarters.”

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Five Things We Should Worry about in 2011

The mid-term elections were a rejection of President Obama’s big-government agenda, but those results don’t necessarily mean better policy. We should not forget, after all, that Democrats rammed through Obamacare even after losing the special election to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts (much to my dismay, my prediction from last January was correct).

Similarly, GOP control of the House of Representatives does not automatically mean less government and more freedom. Heck, it doesn’t even guarantee that things won’t continue to move in the wrong direction. Here are five possible bad policies for 2011, most of which the Obama White House can implement by using executive power.

1. A back-door bailout of the states from the Federal Reserve – The new GOP Congress presumably wouldn’t be foolish enough to bail out profligate states such as California and Illinois, but that does not mean the battle is won. Ben Bernanke already has demonstrated that he is willing to curry favor with the White House by debasing the value of the dollar, so what’s to stop him from engineering a back-door bailout by having the Federal Reserve buy state bonds? The European Central Bank already is using this tactic to bail out Europe’s welfare states, so a precedent already exists for this type of misguided policy. To make matters worse, there’s nothing Congress can do – barring legislation that Obama presumably would veto – to stop the Fed from this awful policy.

2. A front-door bailout of Europe by the United States – Welfare states in Europe are teetering on the edge of insolvency. Decades of big government have crippled economic growth and generated mountains of debt. Ireland and Greece already have been bailed out, and Portugal and Spain are probably next on the list, to be followed by countries such as Italy and Belgium. So why should American taxpayers worry about European bailouts? The unfortunate answer is that American taxpayers will pick up a big chunk of the tab if the International Monetary Fund is involved. Indeed, this horse already has escaped the barn. The United States provides the largest amount of  subsidies to the International Monetary Fund, and the IMF took part in the bailouts of Greece and Ireland. The Senate did vote against having American taxpayers take part in the bailout of Greece, but that turned out to be a symbolic exercise. Sadly, that’s probably what we can expect if and when there are bailouts of the bigger European welfare states.

3. Republicans getting duped by Obama and supporting a VAT – The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama Administration is contemplating a reduction in the corporate income tax. This sounds like a great idea, particularly since America’s punitive corporate tax rate is undermining competitiveness and hindering job creation. But what happens if Obama demands that Congress approve a value-added tax to “pay for” the lower corporate tax rate? This would be a terrible deal, sort of like a football team trading a great young quarterback for a 35-year old lineman. The VAT would give statists a money machine that they need to turn the United States into a French-style welfare state. This type of national sales tax would only be acceptable if the personal and corporate income taxes were abolished – and the Constitution was amended to make sure the federal government never again could tax what we earn and produce. But that’s not the deal Obama would offer. My fingers are crossed that Obama doesn’t offer to swap a lower corporate income tax for a VAT, particularly since we already know that some Republicans are susceptible to the VAT.

4. Regulatory imposition of global warming policy – This actually is an issue we needed to start worrying about before this year. The Obama Administration already is in the process of trying to use regulatory edicts to impose Kyoto-style restrictions on energy use, and 2011 may be a pivotal year for this issue. This issue is troubling because of the potential impact on economic growth, but it also represents an assault on the rule of law since the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are engaging in regulatory overreach because they did not have enough support to get so-called climate change legislation through Congress. The new GOP majority presumably will try to use the “power of the purse” to limit the EPA’s power grab, and the outcome of that fight could have dramatic implications for job creation and competitiveness.

5. U.N. control of the Internet – The Federal Communications Commission just engaged in an unprecedented power grab as part of its “Net Neutrality” initiative, so we already have bad news for both Internet consumers and America’s telecommunications industry. But it may get worse. The bureaucrats at the United Nations, conspiring with autocratic governments, have created an Internet Governance Forum in hopes of grabbing power over the online world. This has caused considerable angst, leading Vint Cerf, one of inventors of the Internet (sorry, Al Gore) to warn: “We don’t believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance. The current bottoms-up, open approach works — protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let’s fight to keep it that way.” International bureaucracies are very skilled at incrementally increasing their authority, so this won’t be a one-year fight. Stopping this power grab will require persistent oversight and a willingness to reject compromises that inevitably give bureaucracies more power and simply set the stage for further demands.

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Senate Unanimously Rejects Greek Bailout

In an uncharacteristic display of fiscal rectitude, Senators voted 94-0 against the Greek bailout. But don’t get too excited. They only voted to instruct the White house to oppose the bailout in the absence of a plan to pay back the money. Needless to say, the Greeks, the IMF, and/or the White House will lie if the amendment becomes law. Speaking of which, approving an amendment in the Senate means nothing unless the provision is included in a final bill. Last but not least, the amendment is too weak. It should have blocked any bailout. Heck, it should have withdrawn the United States from the IMF altogether. But a baby needs to learn to crawl before it can walk, so I suppose we should be happy that the kleptocrats in Washington at least cast a symbolic vote to defend taxpayers. Here’s a report from the EU Business:

The US Senate on Monday easily approved a measure aimed at blocking International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid packages like the one for Greece absent a guarantee that the money will be repaid. Lawmakers voted 94-0 to approve the measure, crafted by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, attaching it to broad legislation to overhaul financial industry rules in the wake of the 2008 global economic meltdown. The amendment calls for President Barack Obama’s administration to measure any IMF aid package to a country whose public debt exceeds its annual gross domestic product in order to certify that the loan will be repaid. If the administration were unable to make such a certification, it would be directed to oppose the assistance and vote against it at the IMF. “Greece is going to get 40 billion dollars in loans from the IMF, out of which seven billion dollars is attributable to the contributions of the American taxpayer. They shouldn’t have to do that unless we have an assurance that it will be paid back,” Cornyn said shortly before the vote. …If the Senate passes the overhaul legislation, Cornyn’s measure would still need to survive a House-Senate “conference” to reconcile their rival versions of the bill before it can go to Obama to be signed into law.

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The IMF Is Urging Governments to Impose Regulatory and Tax Cartels to Benefit Politicians

Price fixing is illegal in the private sector, but unfortunately there are no rules against schemes by politicians to create oligopolies in order to prop up bad government policy. The latest example comes from the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund, who are conspiring with national governments to impose higher taxes and regulations on the banking sector. The pampered bureaucrats at the IMF (who get tax-free salaries while advocating higher taxes on the rest of us) say these policies are needed because of bailouts, yet such an approach would institutionalize moral hazard by exacerbating the government-created problem of “too big to fail.” But what is particularly disturbing about the latest IMF scheme is that the international bureaucracy wants to coerce all nations into imposing high taxes and excessive regulation. The bureaucrats realize that if some nations are allowed to have free markets, jobs and investment would flow to those countries and expose the foolishness of the bad policy being advocated elsewhere by the IMF. Here’s a brief excerpt from a report in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Strauss-Kahn said there was broad agreement on the need for consensus and coordination in the reform of the global financial sector. “Even if they don’t follow exactly the same rule, they have to follow rules which will not be in conflict,” he said. He said there were still major differences of opinion on how to proceed, saying that countries whose banking systems didn’t need taxpayer bailouts weren’t willing to impose extra taxation on their banks now, to create a cushion against further financial shocks. …Mr. Strauss-Kahn said the overriding goal was to prevent “regulatory arbitrage”—the migration of banks to places where the burden of tax and regulation is lightest. He said countries with tighter regulation of banks might be able to justify not imposing new taxes.

I’ve been annoyingly repetitious on the importance of making governments compete with each other, largely because the evidence showing that jurisdictional rivalry is a very effective force for good policy around the world. I’ve done videos showing the benefits of tax competition, videos making the economic and moral case for tax havens, and videos exposing the myths and demagoguery of those who want to undermine tax competition. I’ve traveled around the world to fight the international bureaucracies, and even been threatened with arrest for helping low-tax nations resist being bullied by high-tax nations. Simply stated, we need jurisdictional competition so that politicians know that taxpayers can escape fiscal oppression. In the absence of external competition, politicians are like fiscal alcoholics who are unable to resist the temptation to over-tax and over-spend.

This is why the IMF’s new scheme should be resisted. It is not the job of international bureaucracies to interfere with the sovereign right of nations to determine their own tax and regulatory policies. If France and Germany want to adopt statist policies, they should have that right. Heck, Obama wants America to make similar mistakes. But Hong Kong, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and other market-oriented jurisdictions should not be coerced into adopting the same misguided policies.

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Tax-Free IMF Bureaucrats Urging Latvia to Repeal Flat Tax

The International Monetary Fund does not always give bad advice, but the bureaucrats (who get very generous tax-free salaries) are infamous for advising economically-troubled nations to raise tax rates. The latest example if from Latvia, which got itself in trouble by overspending during the boom years and taking on too much debt. The IMF, to its credit, has asked for long-overdue reductions in a bloated public sector, but Latvia’s economy also needs investment to get back on the right path – and that will be less likely if the nation’s politicians acquiesce to IMF demands to replace the flat tax with a system that discriminates against those that contribute more to growth. Bloomberg reports on how the IMF is using American tax dollars to push bad tax policy: