The Obligatory “I Told You So, You Dumb SOBs” Post about Greece

Almost two years ago, I wrote that bailing out Greece was misguided because it would dig the debt hole deeper.

More recently, I wrote an I-told-you-so post that looked at my four original predictions and patted myself on the back for being accurate (not that it took any special insight to conclude that bailouts would make things worse).

But now it’s time for a turbo-charged I-told-you-so post. The UK-based Telegraph has a remarkable story about the chaos in Europe. This passage is a good summary of the circular firing squad.

Just when the eurozone governments thought it could not get worse for Europe’s single currency, it did.Shell-shocked EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Saturday were already reeling from the worst Franco-German rift for over 20 years and a fractious failure to resolve the problems that have brought Greece, and the euro, close to the brink.But then a new bombshell hit as a joint report by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that, without a default, the Greek debt crisis alone could swallow the eurozone’s entire €440 billion bailout fund – leaving nothing to spare to help the affected banks of Italy, Spain or France.

And to understand how the situation is so dire, here are some additional details.

Compounding the trauma, Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister turned IMF chief – and one of the few key players who appeared to be enjoying herself in her new headmistress-like role – issued a grim warning to her former European peers. The IMF would no longer be willing to pick up a third of the total bill for rescuing Greece, a contribution worth €73 billion, unless European banks were prepared to write off 50 per cent of Greek debt. “It was grim. The worst mood I have ever seen, a complete mess,” said one eurozone finance minister.

But here’s the key passage of the entire article, where the German Finance Minister correctly complains that the crisis is now three times as costly thanks to previous bailouts.

According to insiders, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, could not resist taking an “I told you so” approach – he had been, after all, the first to call for an “orderly” default for Greece 18 months ago, at a time when the cost of such a move was less than one third of the price today. “Schaeuble is a man who does not mince his words, whose reputation for harshness and arrogance is well earned. He was, frankly, unbearable,” said one diplomat.

This is similar to the point I made in my post about whether the bailouts would work. But as I noted above, there was nothing profound about my predictions. Sort of like predicting water runs downhill.

The amusing part of the story is the infighting among Europe’s politicians.

Interpersonal relations between eurozone leaders have hit an all-time low, reflecting sharp disagreements between Germany and France over using the ECB to bailout the euro and presenting an additional obstacle to finding a “grand solution” to Europe’s debt crisis. Nicolas Sarkozy’s “two faced” personality has been cited as a major factor in his dysfunctional relationship with Angela Merkel. …A row between the pair in Frankfurt on Wednesday overshadowed leaving-do celebrations to mark the end of Jean-Claude Trichet’s nine years as the head of the ECB. “Their shouting could be heard down the corridor in the concert hall where an orchestra was about to play the EU’s anthem, Ode to Joy,” said an incredulous EU official.

And the depressing part of the story is how one of the chief Euro-crats is trying to use the crisis as an excuse for more centralization in Brussels.

Herman Van Rompuy, the EU president who is regarded by many as too close to Berlin, angered many countries when he made confidential proposals for the creation of a European finance ministry. His plan, which has considerable backing from the growing body of EU bureaucrats who see a unified EU treasury as the only solution to the problem of countries spending more than the euro can stand, would mean a centralised body able to override national budgets and enforce cuts on profligate governments.

I doubt this terrible idea will be approved, but the final outcome won’t be pleasant.

The worst-case scenario is that American taxpayers somehow will get suckered into participating in a bailout. The Senate has voted against subsidizing the failure of European socialism, but Obama has said he wants American taxpayers to participate in a bailout and the White House may use the Fed or some back-door mechanism to unilaterally link America to Europe’s sinking ship.

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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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The “I-Told-You-So” Blog Post about the Completely Predictable Failure of the Greek Bailout

Way back in February of 2010, I wrote that a Greek bailout would be a failure. Not surprisingly, the parasites at the International Monetary Fund and the political elite from other European nations ignored my advice and gave tens of billions of dollars to Greece’s corrupt politicians.

The bailout happened in part because politicians and international bureaucrats (when they’re not busy molesting hotel maids) have a compulsion to squander other people’s money. But it also should be noted that the Greek bailout was a way of indirectly bailing out the big European banks that recklessly lent money to a profligate government (as explained here).

At the risk of sounding smug, let’s look at my four predictions from February 2010 and see how I did.

1. The first prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will reward over-spending politicians and make future fiscal crises more likely.” That certainly seems to be the case since Europe is in even worse shape, so I’ll give myself a gold star.

2. The second prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will reward greedy and short-sighted interest groups, particularly overpaid government workers.” Given the refusal of Greek politicians to follow through with promised cuts and privatizations, largely because of domestic resistance, it seems I was right again. As such, I’ll give myself another pat on the back.

3. My third prediction was that “Bailing out Greece will encourage profligacy in Spain, Italy, and other nations.” Again, events certainly seem to confirm what I warned about last year, so let’s put this one in the win column as well.

4. Last but not least, my fourth prediction was that “Bailing out Greece is not necessary to save the euro.” Well, since everybody is now talking about two possible non-bailout options – either a Greek default (a “restructuring” in PC terms) or a Greek return to using the drachma – and acknowledging that neither is a threat to the euro, it seems I batted 4-4 in my predictions.

But there’s no reward for being right. Especially when making such obvious predictions about the failure of big-government policies. So now we’re back where we were early last year, with Greece looking for another pile of money. Here’s a brief blurb from Reuters.

The European Union is racing to draft a second bailout package for Greece to release vital loans next month and avert the risk of the euro zone country defaulting, EU officials said on Monday.

If this second bailout happens (and it probably will), then I will make four new predictions. But I don’t need to spell them out because they’ll be the same ones I made last year.

We’ve reached the lather-rinse-repeat stage of fiscal collapse for the welfare state.

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International Bureaucrats: Riding the (Tax-Free) 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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Europe and Greece: Every Option Is on the Table…Except Doing the Right Thing

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center has a very good – but somewhat depressing – analysis of the fiscal crisis in Greece. She basically concludes that bailouts will continue because nobody in Europe is willing to do the right thing.

This got me thinking about what I expect to happen. Here are the options, along with my (admittedly wild) guesses about their likely implementation. They add up to more than 100 percent because I think the Greek government (aided and abetted by their German and French enablers) will adopt more than one of these options.

Indeed, the only option that is completely unrealistic is doing the right thing and reducing Greece’s bloated public sector.

My CYA disclaimer is that these are the probabilities for the next two years.

New Bailouts – 40 percent chance of additional funds from European taxpayers (via the European Union) and/or from world taxpayers (via the IMF).

Default to Private Bondholders – 25 percent chance of default (a.k.a., restructuring) of at least some portion of the money owed to private investors. This number would be higher if it wasn’t for the next options.

Restructuring of Prior Bailouts – 50 percent chance of an indirect bailout by restructuring existing loans from the European Commission and/or IMF.

Indirect Bailout from the ECB – 80 percent chance of additional purchases of Greek government bonds by the European Central Bank.

More Tax Increases – 65 percent chance of additional significant tax hikes. I’m tempted to make this 100 percent, but I think even the Europeans realize that Greece is probably on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. As such, more tax increases would reduce revenues for the government.

Leave the euro – 10 percent chance that the government will abandon the common European currency. It may seem like I’m not giving enough consideration to this option, particularly since going back to the drachma would give the government the ability to screw bondholders with inflation. Veronique’s article explains why this might not be an attractive option, but I’ll add one further point. The European elite passionately favor centralization and the common currency is a symbol of centralization. As such, they will provide endless amounts of bailout money before allowing something that would be interpreted as a violation against their secular religion of “ever closer union.”

Real Spending Cuts – .0001 percent chance of meaningful reductions in the burden of government spending. Why do the right thing when you can get taxpayers from Germany, Netherlands, and other nations to subsidize your corrupt fiscal regime?!?

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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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Beware of Greeks Accepting Gifts

On rare occasions, I dream about being a politician or high-level international bureaucrat. Not because I want to be a moocher (please put me out of my misery if that ever happens), but because I periodically read about some sleazy interest group making petulant demands for handouts and I think about how much fun it would be to tell them to go jump in a lake.

In some cases, the sleazy interest group is an entire nation. Greece recently took a bailout from both the European Union (i.e., European taxpayers) and the International Monetary Fund (i.e., all taxpayers). In exchange for getting a handout, Greek politicians agreed to implement a bunch of deficit-reduction policies.

But like many welfare recipients, the country of Greece has an entitlement mentality and is now whining and complaining about having to live up to its side of the bargain.

All I can think about is how rewarding and satisfying it would be to say, “okay, a__h___s, have it your way, we’re revoking your bailout. Have fun becoming Argentina on your way to becoming Zimbabwe, you bloodsucking leeches.”

Actually, if I had that power, Greece never would have received a bailout in the first place, but I think you know what I mean.

Here are some excerpts from the Reuters report about Greece’s chutzpah.

Greece accused the EU and IMF of interfering in its domestic affairs on Saturday after the international lenders said Athens must speed up reforms and sell more public assets. On Friday, EU and IMF inspectors visiting Greece to monitor the implementation of a bailout plan that saved Greece from bankruptcy, approved more aid for the country but adopted a more critical tone than on previous visits. In rare harsh words, the Greek government said the inspectors’ approach was unacceptable, after coming under fire from local media for not reacting to criticism of the pace of reforms and the call for privatizations. …Earlier in the day, government spokesman George Petalotis said: “We asked nobody to interfere in domestic affairs … We only take orders from the Greek people.”

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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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Even Folks at Harvard and the IMF Are Beginning to Realize You Don’t Solve an Over-Spending Problem with Higher Taxes

In his latest Bloomberg column, Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute notes that research from places such as Harvard and the International Monetary Fund confirms that spending restraint is the way to successfully reduce red ink – and it’s also the way to improve economic performance.

The antidote to fiscal crisis is fiscal consolidation… Such consolidations have relied on varying degrees of tax increases and spending reductions. Some have successfully reduced debt, some haven’t. The data tell a clear story: What works is cutting government spending. A series of influential papers by Harvard University economist Alberto Alesina and various co-authors found decisive evidence that successful consolidations rely almost exclusively on spending reductions, while unsuccessful consolidations seek to close 50 percent or more of the gap with tax increases. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund supports the principle that cuts, particularly to entitlement programs, are key. …Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth. Tax increases fail to achieve sustained debt reduction for two likely reasons. First, they increase the risk that an economy will experience a double-dip recession. Second, they illustrate that the offending government is unwilling to take a tough stand against soaring entitlements. A welfare state that can’t shrink in a recession will possibly never shrink, which means that today’s high taxes provide an ominous foreshadow of even higher rates to come.

The entire column is worth reading. Kevin is not as firmly against tax increases as I would like, but he is always thorough and the information in his column definitely supports the notion that spending is the problem and therefore any fiscal consolidation should be based on restraining the size of government.

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Greetings from Austria

I spoke yesterday in Vienna on the third stop on the FMRS tour. My speech focused on solutions to the fiscal crisis. I pointed out the need to substantially reduce the burden of government spending and also warned against higher tax rates – in part because higher tax rates discourage much-needed economic growth.

This puts me in direct conflict with many European politicians, many of whom think extracting more money from taxpayers is the answer to the over-spending problem. Some of these politicians try to sound more rational by saying they don’t necessarily want to boost tax rates and instead would be happy to collect more money by more onerous enforcement of existing tax laws.

I don’t think it is reasonable to expect big reductions in the underground (or shadow) economy. In a previous post, I quoted an IMF paper authored by Friedrich Schneider, which noted (with particular reference to Austria):

Macroeconomic and microeconomic modeling studies based on data for several countries suggest that the major driving forces behind the size and growth of the shadow economy are an increasing burden of tax and social security payments… The bigger the difference between the total cost of labor in the official economy and the after-tax earnings from work, the greater the incentive for employers and employees to avoid this difference and participate in the shadow economy. …Several studies have found strong evidence that the tax regime influences the shadow economy. …In Austria, the burden of direct taxes (including social security payments) has been the biggest influence on the growth of the shadow economy… Other studies show similar results for the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the United States. In the United States, analysis shows that as the marginal federal personal income tax rate increases by one percentage point, other things being equal, the shadow economy grows by 1.4 percentage points. …A study of Quebec City in Canada shows that people are highly mobile between the official and the shadow economy, and that as net wages in the official economy go up, they work less in the shadow economy. This study also emphasizes that where people perceive the tax rate as too high, an increase in the (marginal) tax rate will lead to a decrease in tax revenue.

Interestingly, I just came across a new study from the Bank of Italy that looks at the issue from the perspective of “taxpayer morale.” The study finds that tax compliance also is sensitive to public perceptions about whether taxpayer money is being wasted. This excerpt touches on many of the key issues, and all I could think of when reading the study was bailouts, handouts, and other forms of corrupt and inefficient spending on both sides of the Atlantic:

…our measure of public spending inefficiency enters with the expected negative sign, and it is significant at the 1 percent level. Taxpayers interacting with a more efficient public sector are likely to show a higher level of tax morale. Our result can be interpreted by looking at the interaction between citizens and the government as a contractual relationship, implying duties and rights for each contract partner. If the taxpayer observes that the tax burden is not spent efficiently, he will feel cheated and his willingness to cooperate will fall. …Torgler and Werner (2005) state that greater fiscal autonomy allows regions to spend the tax revenues according to local preferences and this, in turn, might have a positive impact on tax morale. …As expected, the coefficient on the level of public spending per capita enters with a positive sign, and it is significantly different from zero. On the other side, we find a weak positive relationship between fiscal autonomy and tax morale, thus partially confirming the results by Torgler and Werner (2005). At the same time, the coefficient of public spending inefficiency remains negative and highly significant. …We find that tax morale is higher when the taxpayer perceives and observes that the government is efficient; that is, it provides a fair output with respect to the revenues. This evidence can be interpreted in terms of a psychological contract between taxpayer and fiscal authorities in which the former punishes the local government when he observes that resources are not spent well. Therefore, encouraging more efficient spending of public resources has wider consequences and contributes to increasing the citizens’ propensity to pay taxes.

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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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Wall Street Journal Savages Greek Bailout

I always appreciate a column that sounds like I could have been the author, and this editorial from the WSJ hits the mark. The IMF/EU bailout is just masking the problems of a bloated welfare state and giving politicians some breathing room to avoid making the real reforms that are needed:

It hasn’t been a week since the terms of Athens’s €110 billion ($145 billion) bailout were set, and already the reviews of this latest Greek drama are saying it’s a flop. Yesterday the euro sank to its lowest level in a year. Stock markets across Europe fell nearly 3%, and the carnage spread to Wall Street and beyond. Greek interest-rate spreads climbed higher again, and market players have turned their attention to the euro zone’s other weak sisters as everyone tries to figure out who is most likely to follow Greece down the road to national insolvency. The bailout, in other words, hasn’t stopped the much-feared contagion. If anything, it has spread it. Part of the problem lies with the bailout’s terms. The €110 billion agreed over the weekend was more than twice the €45 billion originally proposed, but it came with revised deficit projections that immediately made even the higher number look inadequate to fund Greece’s bloated state. …According to the latest official projections, Greek public debt, currently 108% of gross domestic product, will top 149% of GDP in 2013, the year that the bailout loans, in theory, come due. Assuming an average interest rate of 6% on that debt, Greece would be left paying 9% of its GDP to bondholders, 80% of whom are located abroad. Put another way, 25% of Greek tax revenue would go toward interest payments to foreign bondholders. Meanwhile, Greece’s government spending equals more than 50% of GDP and labor productivity is well below the EU average, neither of which bode well for growth going forward. …It’s time that Greece and the rest of Europe started listening to the market instead of attacking it. Greece needs a debt restructuring and wholesale reforms that reduce the state’s share of GDP and promote economic growth. As for the rest of Europe and the U.S., Greece’s predicament is a warning to stop the tax and spending binge before it leads to crisis.

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Will the Greek Bailout Work?

As expected, the European Union and International Monetary Fund have chosen to subsidize the profligacy of Greek politicians. A deal has just been announced. As the Washington Post reports:

Greece on Sunday announced a long-awaited deal with the European Union and International Monetary Fund for a $145 billion financial rescue, an unprecedented package… The three-year package is also the largest international rescue to be backed by the IMF. …The proposed cuts in Greece include a new round of reductions in salaries for state workers, more flexibility to fire them, an increase in the value-added tax from 21 percent to 23 percent, and higher taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol. More state-run industries are expected to be privatized, and military spending will be slashed.

I’m not terribly optimistic about the long-run consequences. I also can’t resist pointing out that the VAT has jumped from 19 percent to 21 percent to 23 percent during this crisis, which underscores how easy it is for politicians to use the tax as a bottomless ATM machine. My Cato colleague Jeff Miron shares my pessimism, writing in Forbes that:

A bailout will not address the fundamental causes of Greece’s fiscal problems. Greece has an expansive but highly inefficient civil service and an economy stifled by regulation, favoritism and rent-seeking. These policies have generated double-digit deficits and a debt-to-GDP ratio well over 100%. The situation is not even close to sustainable, so absent a bailout Greece will default on its debts. A bailout, however, does nothing to fix the misguided policies that have generated Greece’s existing debt and ongoing deficits. Bailout therefore merely postpones the day of reckoning. Worse, bailout both rewards Greece’s bad past behavior and encourages such behavior in future. Greece will never change its misguided policies if the E.U. and IMF infuse it with new cash, just as no teenager who has overspent an allowance will reform if the parents merely expand that allowance. …The negatives do not end with the current bailout. Greece will be back for additional bailouts in short order, since under a bailout it will not fix its underlying problems. And once the EU and IMF have bailed out Greece, they will find it impossible to resist bailouts for Portugal or Spain. As the recent downgrading of these countries’ bonds suggests, they (perhaps along with Italy and Ireland) are also at risk of default in the near future. …Rather than bail out Greece, therefore, the E.U. and IMF should allow it to default. This will hurt Greece’s creditors, but those entities assumed the risk when they loaned to a country long known for its profligate ways. In contrast, a bailout forces unwitting taxpayers to foot the bill for Greece’s sins. This can only breed resentment, not to mention reduced incentives for other countries to restrain their own spending.

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Greece’s Problem Is High Tax Rates, not Tax Evasion

The New York Times has an article describing widespread tax evasion in Greece, along with an implication that the country’s fiscal crisis is largely the result of unpaid taxes and could be mostly solved if taxpayers were more obedient to the state. This is grossly inaccurate. A quick look at the budget numbers reveals that tax revenues have remained relatively constant in recent years, consuming nearly 40 percent of GDP. The burden of government spending, by contrast, has jumped significantly and now exceeds 50 percent of Greek economic output.

The article also is flawed in assuming that harsher enforcement is the key to compliance. As the video shows, even the economists at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development admit that tax evasion is driven by high tax rates (which is remarkable since the OECD is the international bureaucracy pushing for global tax rules to undermine tax competition and reduce fiscal sovereignty).

Ironically, the New York Times article quotes Friedrich Schneider of Johannes Kepler University in Austria, but only to provide an estimate of Greece’s shadow economy. The reporter should have looked at an article that Schneider wrote for the International Monetary Fund, which found that:

Macroeconomic and microeconomic modeling studies based on data for several countries suggest that the major driving forces behind the size and growth of the shadow economy are an increasing burden of tax and social security payments… The bigger the difference between the total cost of labor in the official economy and the after-tax earnings from work, the greater the incentive for employers and employees to avoid this difference and participate in the shadow economy. …Several studies have found strong evidence that the tax regime influences the shadow economy. …In Austria, the burden of direct taxes (including social security payments) has been the biggest influence on the growth of the shadow economy… Other studies show similar results for the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the United States. In the United States, analysis shows that as the marginal federal personal income tax rate increases by one percentage point, other things being equal, the shadow economy grows by 1.4 percentage points. …A study of Quebec City in Canada shows that people are highly mobile between the official and the shadow economy, and that as net wages in the official economy go up, they work less in the shadow economy. This study also emphasizes that where people perceive the tax rate as too high, an increase in the (marginal) tax rate will lead to a decrease in tax revenue.

It is worth noting the Schneider’s research also shows why Obama’s tax policy is very misguided. The President wants to boost the top tax rate by nearly five percentage points, and that’s on top of the big increase in the tax rate on saving and investment included in Obamacare. Based on Schneider’s research, we can expect America’s underground economy to expand.

Shifting back to Greece, Schneider does not claim that tax rates are the only factor determining compliance. But his research indicates that more onerous enforcement regimes are unlikely to put much of a dent in tax evasion unless accompanied by better tax policy (i.e., lower tax rates). Moreover, compliance also is undermined by the rampant corruption and incompetence of the Greek government, but that problem won’t be solved unless politicians reduce the size and scope of the public sector. Needless to say, that’s not very likely. So when I read some of the details in this excerpt from the New York Times, much of my sympathy is for taxpayers rather than the greedy politicians that turned Greece into a fiscal mess:

In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools. So tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area — a sprawling collection of expensive villas tucked behind tall gates — and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools. That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here. …Such evasion has played a significant role in Greece’s debt crisis, and as the country struggles to get its financial house in order, it is going after tax cheats as never before. …To get more attentive care in the country’s national health system, Greeks routinely pay doctors cash on the side, a practice known as “fakelaki,” Greek for little envelope. And bribing government officials to grease the wheels of bureaucracy is so standard that people know the rates. They say, for instance, that 300 euros, about $400, will get you an emission inspection sticker. …Various studies have concluded that Greece’s shadow economy represented 20 to 30 percent of its gross domestic product. Friedrich Schneider, the chairman of the economics department at Johannes Kepler University of Linz, studies Europe’s shadow economies; he said that Greece’s was at 25 percent last year and estimated that it would rise to 25.2 percent in 2010.

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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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Good News for American Taxpayers (in the short run), Bad News for European Taxpayers

According to Financial Times report the politicians in Paris and Berlin want to set up some sort of European Monetary Fund to help bail out Greece and other profligate European nations. This is good news in the short run for American taxpayers since it is less likely that American taxpayers will be financing bailouts through the International Monetary Fund. But this is not good news for America in the long run. Bailouts will encourage bad policy in Europe, regardless of whether they are financed with European tax dollars or American tax dollars. This means more economic instability in the future. At worst, this means big future bailouts financed by the United States. But even in a best-case scenario, Europe will be poorer, and that means less trade:

Germany and France are planning to launch a sweeping new initiative to reinforce economic co-operation and surveillance within the eurozone, including the establishment of a European Monetary Fund, according to senior government officials. Their intention is to set up the rules and tools to prevent any recurrence of instability in the eurozone stemming from the indebtedness of a single member state, such as Greece. …If France and Germany can agree on such proposals – long urged by Paris – they are likely to set the basis for the most radical overhaul of the rules underpinning the euro since the currency was launched in 1999. …Both France and Germany agree Greece should not turn to the IMF for support, so the idea of an EMF has clear attractions for Paris, though it could hardly be set up in time to help Greece. Mr Schäuble said: “We are not planning a competitor . . . to the IMF, but we do need an institution for the internal equilibrium of the eurozone that would have at its disposal both the experience of the IMF, and comparable intervention mechanisms.” According to German thinking, the plan could include tough penalties for eurozone members that fail to curb deficit spending or run up excessive government debt. Ideas include cutting off countries that fail to curb deficit spending from EU cohesion funds, temporarily removing their right to vote in EU ministerial meetings and suspension from the eurozone.

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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: