The IMF Is the Dumpster Fire of the Global Economy

I thought the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development had cemented its status as the world’s worst international bureaucracy when it called for a Keynesian spending binge even though the global economy is still suffering from previous schemes for government “stimulus.”

But the International Monetary Fund is causing me to reconsider my views.

First, some background about the IMF. Almost all of the problems occur when the political appointees at the top of the organization make policy choices. That’s when you get the IMF’s version of junk science, with laughable claims about inequality and growth, bizarrely inconsistent arguments about infrastructure spending, calls for massive energy taxes,

By contrast, you do get some worthwhile research from the career economists (on issues such as spending caps, fiscal decentralization, and the Laffer Curve).

But that kind of professional analysis gets almost no attention. The IMF’s grossly overpaid (and untaxed!) Managing Director seemingly devotes all her energy to pushing and publicizing bad policies.

The Wall Street Journal reports, for instance, that the IMF is following the OECD down the primrose path of fiscal recklessness and is also urging nations to throw good money after bad with another Keynesian spending spree.

The world’s largest economies should agree to a coordinated increase in government spending to counter the growing risk of a deeper global economic slowdown, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday. …the IMF is pushing G-20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Shanghai later this week to agree on bold new commitments for public spending.

Fortunately, at least one major economy seems uninterested in the IMF’s snake-oil medicine.

The IMF’s calls will face some resistance in Shanghai. Fiscal hawk Germany has been reluctant to heed long-issued calls by the U.S., the IMF and others to help boost the eurozone’s weak recovery with public spending.

Hooray for the Germans. I don’t particularly like fiscal policy in that nation, but I at least give the Germans credit for understanding at the end of the day that 2 + 2 = 4.

I’m also hoping the British government, which is being pressured by the IMF, also resists pressure to adopt Dr. Kevorkian economic policy.

The International Monetary Fund has urged the UK to ease back on austerity… IMF officials said the Treasury had done enough to stabilise the government’s finances for it to embark on extra investment spending… The Treasury declined to comment on the IMF report. The report said: “Flexibility in the fiscal framework should be used to modify the pace of adjustment in the event of weaker demand growth.” …Osborne has resisted attempts to coordinate spending by G20 countries to boost growth, preferring to focus on reducing the deficit in public spending to achieve a balanced budget by 2020.

But you’ll be happy to know the IMF doesn’t discriminate.

It balances out calls for bad policy in the developed world with calls for bad policy in other places as well. And the one constant theme is that taxes always should be increased.

I wrote last year about how the IMF wants to sabotage China’s economy with tax hikes.

Well, here are some excerpts from a Dow Jones report on the IMF proposing higher tax burdens, tax harmonization, and bigger government in the Middle East.

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday urged energy exporters of the Middle East to raise more taxes… “These economies need to strengthen their fiscal frameworks…by boosting non-hydrocarbon sources of revenues,” Christine Lagarde said at a finance forum in the United Arab Emirates capital. …Ms. Lagarde called on the Persian Gulf states to introduce a valued added tax, which, even at a relatively low rate, could lift gross domestic product by 2%, she said. …Ms. Lagarde, who on Friday clinched a second five-year term as the IMF’s managing director, also urged governments in the region to consider raising corporate income taxes and even prepare for personal income taxes. Income taxes in particular could prove a sensitive move in the Gulf, which in recent decades has attracted millions of workers from abroad by offering, among other things, light-touch tax regimes. Ms. Lagarde also wants to discourage “overly aggressive tax competition” among countries that allow international companies and wealthy individuals to shift their wealth to lower tax destinations.

Wow, Ms. Lagarde may be the world’s most government-centric person, putting even Bernie Sanders in her dust.

She managed, in a single speech, to argue that higher taxes “strengthen…fiscal frameworks” even though that approach eventually leads to massive fiscal instability. She also apparently claimed that a value-added tax could boost economic output, an idea so utterly absurd that I hope the reporter simply mischaracterized her comments and that instead she merely asserted that a VAT could transfer an additional 2 percent of the economy’s output into government coffers. And she even urged the imposition of income taxes, which almost certainly would be a recipe for turning thriving economies such as Dubai back into backward jurisdictions where prosperity is limited to the oil-dependent ruling class.

And it goes without saying that the IMF wants to export bad policy to every corner of the world.

The IMF chief said taxation allows governments to mobilize their revenues. She noted, however, that the process can be undermined by “overly aggressive tax competition” among countries, and companies abusing the system of international taxation. …She argued that the automatic exchange of taxpayer information among governments could make it harder for businesses to follow the scheme.

And don’t forget that the IMF oftentimes will offer countries money to implement bad policy, like when the bureaucrats bribed Albania to get rid of its flat tax.

P.S. Now perhaps you’ll understand why I was so disappointed that last year’s budget deal included a provision to expand the IMF’s authority to push bad policy around the world.

P.P.S. In other words, American taxpayers are being forced to subsidize the IMF so it can advocate higher taxes on American taxpayers! Sort of like having to buy a gun for the robber who wants to steal your money.

P.P.P.S. Though I’ll also be grateful that the IMF inadvertently and accidentally provided some very powerful data against the value-added tax.