Draw Your Own Conclusions

The lead, page one article in some pink, foreign newspaper discusses the new, freshly minted role of the International Monetary Fund. Last week I read coverage of the negotiations and the coverage put it well, (paraphrasing) "with fewer global deadbeats to lend to, the bureaucracy at the IMF is looking for a new mandate to keep it busy." The likeliest mandate was surely to be the economic hobgoblin du jour, 'global imbalances.' So, now the vast bureaucracy of "C students", as Joseph Stiglitz refered to the IMF, that has racked up a stunning record of failure in dealing with crises, will devote its energies to the non-problem of trade imbalances. This is would be funny if it weren't so sad, because taking the globe as a unit, there are no trade imbalances, unless unbeknownst to me we have started trading with Mars. Clearly the target is the US trade imbalance with China. Europeans love to lecture us about this and wantt to help us address it, probably because the only way to address it is to reduce US prosperity, which is their true ultimate goal.

So, should we be scared when the guys in suits knock on our door and say "we're from a multi-lateral, government-sponsored agency and we're here to help"? Maybe not. It seems that the IMF is relatively toothless and is going to try to drown us in reports and analysis. And the Chinese are making no bones about how they feel (what's Chinese for "lick me"?). So given that the IMF has 1) a record of imcompetence 2) no actual enforcement powers, and 3) little support from a key economic power at the source of 'the problem', maybe this isn't really front page news after all.