On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Doug Henwood wrote: > So today's WSJ article on Keynes says: > <quote> > The [IMF] study concluded that the 14 cases where governments had been > the most draconian -- notably Denmark and Ireland in the mid-1980s -- > resulted in the fastest growth. Ho ho ho. The IMF has outdone itself: this is Bubble-thought at its finest! Ireland was a ravaged neocolony in the early Eighties; the boom was a result of extensive EC subsidies (amounting to 1-2% of GDP in the mid-Eighties, and steadily rising to 5% of GDP today), which funded infrastructure, education, etc. As a result, Ireland has pulled very close to the UK in per capita income terms. Denmark piggybacked onto what we might call "OPK" (Other People's Keynesianisms), namely the vast Central European credit expansion of the mid-Eighties. Denmark also avoided huge budget deficits in the early Nineties because it never deregulated its economy the way the Swedes and Norwegians did, nor suffered from collapsing Soviet markets, the way Finland did. But expecting the truth from the IMF, that vicious gang of monetarist vampires criminally responsible for so much of the economic and social carnage afflicting Africa, Latin America, and now much of Southeast Asia, is a stretch, now isn't it. -- Dennis
