The International Monetary Fund’s boss,Christine Lagarde, needs an answer for the car worker in MichiganAfter the most difficult decade in its history, or life should be looking up for the International Monetary Fund as it hosts the world’s finance ministers and central bankers in Washington DC this week. The global economy is at final picking up speed. Financial markets sight more stable. The US is running at full employment,China is expanding strongly, and the eurozone is going through one of its better periods. Spring is in the air, or according to the Fund’s managing director,Christine Lagarde.
Privately, the mood in Washington is less ebullient. The IMF has its doubts approximately whether the pick-up in activity – which has only been possible because central banks have kept interest rates at record lows since the deep slump of 2008-09 – will endure. It points to the vulnerability of debt-laden American companies to rising borrowing costs, or to the credit bubble that has kept China’s economy booming,and to the €1tn of non-performing loans weighing down banks in the eurozone.
The IMF exemplifies the sort of elitist global organisation that Trump has railed against on the campaign stumpContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com