Douglas Carswell's Blog

Next head of the IMF?

Perhaps the new IMF chief should be someone who doesn’t believe in more bailouts?

Ever since the credit bubble burst, we seem to have been bounced by the experts from one bailout to the next.   

All that seems to have done is turn a banking crisis into a sovereign default crisis.  Far from saving the world, the pro-bailout orthodoxy has left the Western part of it drowning in unmanageable liabilities.   

Whether it has been banks or whole countries, I can’t help noticing that each bailout seems to amount to a transfer of losses from those private interests who lent foolishly, to the rest of us. 

Yet until recently, the IMF - along side many other international institutions - has argued in favour of bailouts that simply postpone default.  Yet it is increasingly clear that with each postponement, all we are doing is simply allowing banks that invested recklessly to escape their losses by passing them over to the taxpayer.

I’d hope that whoever we put in charge of the IMF next understands all this.

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