Posts tagged "IMF"

International Monetary Fund warns on quantitative easing costs

Eonomists at the IMF found the Bank of England could sustain losses of anything up to 5.5% of GDP, or almost £80bn, when it sells the government bonds back into the market

The Bank of England’s recession-busting policy of quantitative easing could end up costing the Treasury up to £80bn – more than outweighing any profits it will make from the scheme, according to new research by the International Monetary Fund.

Policymakers have become increasingly concerned about their “exit strategy” from the unprecedented measures they have used to cushion their economies from the impact of the financial crisis over the past five years.

In a study of the impact of “unconventional” policies, including the Bank’s £375bn bond-buying programme, economists at the IMF found the Bank could sustain losses of anything up to 5.5% of GDP, or almost £80bn when it sells the government bonds back into the market.

The Treasury announced last November it would appropriate the interest payments from the Bank’s holdings of government bonds, in a move that helped to flatter the public finances. Recent Bank research suggested those cumulative gains could eventually add up to £60bn.

But once the economy looks healthier, the Bank is likely to want to unwind the emergency policy, by pushing up interest rates and selling off its bonds.

The IMF suggests that as soon as central banks signal that they are readying themselves to halt QE, bond prices are likely to fall sharply, as investors “run for the door”. Interest rates, which move in the opposite direction to bond prices, would jump and central banks might be forced to push up rates even further to prove they have not lost control of inflation.

“The potential sharp rise in long-term interest rates could prove difficult to control and might undermine the recovery (including through effects on financial stability and investment). It could also induce large fluctuations in capital flows and exchange rates,” the IMF warned.

The research analyses the potential losses to central banks under three possible scenarios, from a relatively benign one percentage point rise in interest rates, to a much more dramatic six percentage point increase in short-term borrowing costs.

Under the most extreme scenario the losses to the exchequer would be £80bn, so even if the Bank is right about the £60bn gains for the Treasury from QE, that could still blow a £20bn hole in the public finances.

Economists stressed that any direct costs of QE should be weighed against the wider benefits to the economy. Erik Britton, of City consultancy Fathom, said, “the losses could be large – that much is true, and they would be borne by the taxpayer; but that would only be in a scenario where we were back in growth, and the benefits to the Treasury of that would outweigh those costs.”

The IMF’s researchers stressed that the prospect of losses on central banks’ balance sheets should not prevent them from unwinding their unconventional policies, but warned that, “the path ahead will be challenging, with many unknowns.”

The Bank of England questioned the IMF’s results, however, saying, “as the IMF report acknowledges, the analysis ignores capital gains and coupon income from bond holdings: that makes the results very misleading”.

Watch out, George Osborne: Smith, Marx and even the IMF are after you | Ha-Joon Chang

When even the IMF’s free market ideologues recoil from the UK chancellor’s austerity politics, democracy itself is at stake

George Osborne and his Treasury officials are gearing up for a fight. They’ve promised to make life difficult for the other side for the next two weeks. The unlikely opponents are the team of economists visiting from the IMF for a regular policy review.

Why has this routine meeting, which would hardly be noticed outside professional circles, become a confrontation? Because the IMF has recently dropped its support for the chancellor’s austerity policy and repeatedly urged him to rethink it. It even said he was “playing with fire” in refusing to change course.

This is an astonishing development. For in the past three decades the IMF has been the standard-bearer for austerity. Back in 1997 it even forced South Korea – with an existing budget surplus and one of the smallest public debts in the world (as a proportion of GDP) – to cut government spending. Only when the policy turned what was already the biggest recession in the country’s history into a catastrophe, with more than 100 firms going bankrupt every day for five months, did it do an embarrassing U-turn and allow a budget deficit to develop.

Given this history, being told by the IMF to go easy on austerity is like being told by the Spanish Inquisition to be more tolerant of heretics. The chancellor and his team should be worried.

If even the IMF doesn’t approve, why is the UK government persisting with a policy that is clearly not working? Or, for that matter, why is the same policy pushed through across Europe? A certain dead economist would have said it is because the government is “in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor“. Dead right.

Current policies in the UK and other European countries are really about making poor people pay for the mistakes of the rich. Millions of poor people have lost their jobs and the support they received through welfare, but how many of those top bankers who caused the crisis have suffered – except for a cancelled knighthood here and a partially returned pension pot there? If anyone has suffered in the financial industry, it is its poorer members – junior analysts who lost their jobs and tellers who are working longer hours for shrinking real wages.

In case you were wondering, it wasn’t Karl Marx who wrote the words that I quoted above. He would have never put it so crudely. His version, delivered with typical panache, was that the “executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. No, those damning words came from Adam Smith, the supposed patron saint of free-market economics.

To Smith and Marx, the class bias of the state was plain to see. They lived at a time when only the rich had votes (if there were elections at all) and so there were few checks on the extent to which they could dictate government policy.

With the subsequent broadening of suffrage, ultimately to every adult, the class nature of the state has been significantly diluted. The welfare state, regulations on monopoly, consumer protection, and protection of worker rights are all things that have been established only because of this political change. Democracy, despite its limitations, is in the end the only way to ensure that policies do not simply benefit the privileged few.

This is, of course, exactly why free-market economists and others who are on the side of the rich have been so negative about democracy. In the old days, free-market economists strongly opposed universal suffrage on the grounds that it would destroy capitalism: poor people would elect politicians who would appropriate the means of the rich and give handouts to the poor, they argued, completely destroying incentives for wealth creation.

Once universal suffrage was introduced, they could not openly oppose democracy. So they started criticising “politics” in general. Politicians, it was argued, would adopt policies that maximised their chances of re-election but damaged the economy – printing money, handing out favours to powerful monopolies, and increasing social welfare spending for the poor. Politicians needed to be prevented from making important policy decisions, the argument went.

On this advice, since the 1980s, many countries have ring-fenced the most important policy areas to keep politicians out. Independent central banks (such as the European Central Bank), independent regulatory agencies (such as Ofcom and Ofgem) and strict rules on government spending and deficits (such as the “balanced budget” rule) have been introduced.

In particularly difficult economic times, it was even argued, we need to insulate economic policies from politics altogether. Latin American military dictatorships were justified in such terms. The recent imposition of “technocratic” governments, made up of economists and bankers who have not been “tainted” by politics, on Greece and Italy comes from the same intellectual stable.

What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy.

The conflict surrounding austerity policies in Europe is, then, not just about figures on budget, unemployment and growth rate. It is also about the meaning of democracy.

As José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, has recently recognised, the policy of austerity has “reached its limits” in terms of “political and social support”. If European leaders, including the British chancellor, keep pushing these policies against those limits, people will inevitably start asking: what is the point of democracy, when policies serve only the interest of the tiny minority at the top? This is nothing less than crunch time for democracy in Europe.

Watch out, George Osborne: Smith, Marx and even the IMF are after you | Ha-Joon Chang

When even the IMF’s free market ideologues recoil from the UK chancellor’s austerity politics, democracy itself is at stake

George Osborne and his Treasury officials are gearing up for a fight. They’ve promised to make life difficult for the other side for the next two weeks. The unlikely opponents are the team of economists visiting from the IMF for a regular policy review.

Why has this routine meeting, which would hardly be noticed outside professional circles, become a confrontation? Because the IMF has recently dropped its support for the chancellor’s austerity policy and repeatedly urged him to rethink it. It even said he was “playing with fire” in refusing to change course.

This is an astonishing development. For in the past three decades the IMF has been the standard-bearer for austerity. Back in 1997 it even forced South Korea – with an existing budget surplus and one of the smallest public debts in the world (as a proportion of GDP) – to cut government spending. Only when the policy turned what was already the biggest recession in the country’s history into a catastrophe, with more than 100 firms going bankrupt every day for five months, did it do an embarrassing U-turn and allow a budget deficit to develop.

Given this history, being told by the IMF to go easy on austerity is like being told by the Spanish Inquisition to be more tolerant of heretics. The chancellor and his team should be worried.

If even the IMF doesn’t approve, why is the UK government persisting with a policy that is clearly not working? Or, for that matter, why is the same policy pushed through across Europe? A certain dead economist would have said it is because the government is “in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor“. Dead right.

Current policies in the UK and other European countries are really about making poor people pay for the mistakes of the rich. Millions of poor people have lost their jobs and the support they received through welfare, but how many of those top bankers who caused the crisis have suffered – except for a cancelled knighthood here and a partially returned pension pot there? If anyone has suffered in the financial industry, it is its poorer members – junior analysts who lost their jobs and tellers who are working longer hours for shrinking real wages.

In case you were wondering, it wasn’t Karl Marx who wrote the words that I quoted above. He would have never put it so crudely. His version, delivered with typical panache, was that the “executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. No, those damning words came from Adam Smith, the supposed patron saint of free-market economics.

To Smith and Marx, the class bias of the state was plain to see. They lived at a time when only the rich had votes (if there were elections at all) and so there were few checks on the extent to which they could dictate government policy.

With the subsequent broadening of suffrage, ultimately to every adult, the class nature of the state has been significantly diluted. The welfare state, regulations on monopoly, consumer protection, and protection of worker rights are all things that have been established only because of this political change. Democracy, despite its limitations, is in the end the only way to ensure that policies do not simply benefit the privileged few.

This is, of course, exactly why free-market economists and others who are on the side of the rich have been so negative about democracy. In the old days, free-market economists strongly opposed universal suffrage on the grounds that it would destroy capitalism: poor people would elect politicians who would appropriate the means of the rich and give handouts to the poor, they argued, completely destroying incentives for wealth creation.

Once universal suffrage was introduced, they could not openly oppose democracy. So they started criticising “politics” in general. Politicians, it was argued, would adopt policies that maximised their chances of re-election but damaged the economy – printing money, handing out favours to powerful monopolies, and increasing social welfare spending for the poor. Politicians needed to be prevented from making important policy decisions, the argument went.

On this advice, since the 1980s, many countries have ring-fenced the most important policy areas to keep politicians out. Independent central banks (such as the European Central Bank), independent regulatory agencies (such as Ofcom and Ofgem) and strict rules on government spending and deficits (such as the “balanced budget” rule) have been introduced.

In particularly difficult economic times, it was even argued, we need to insulate economic policies from politics altogether. Latin American military dictatorships were justified in such terms. The recent imposition of “technocratic” governments, made up of economists and bankers who have not been “tainted” by politics, on Greece and Italy comes from the same intellectual stable.

What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy.

The conflict surrounding austerity policies in Europe is, then, not just about figures on budget, unemployment and growth rate. It is also about the meaning of democracy.

As José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, has recently recognised, the policy of austerity has “reached its limits” in terms of “political and social support”. If European leaders, including the British chancellor, keep pushing these policies against those limits, people will inevitably start asking: what is the point of democracy, when policies serve only the interest of the tiny minority at the top? This is nothing less than crunch time for democracy in Europe.

TUC warns of ‘lost decade’ as IMF arrives to scrutinise UK economy

Officials to investigate economic outlook as unions argue austerity policies are causing UK to lag behind in global recovery

International Monetary Fund officials arrive in London today for their annual health check of Britain’s economy as the government faces a fresh warning its austerity drive is causing a “lost decade of growth”.

Echoing the IMF’s recent warning that George Osborne, the chancellor, needed to ease up on austerity cuts in the face of a stagnant economy, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has argued that the UK is being left behind in the global recovery.

It said the UK is experiencing a slower economic recovery than 23 of the 33 advanced economies monitored by the IMF. The TUC report, issued to coincide with the arrival of the IMF mission, also claims the vast majority of eurozone countries are performing better.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We truly are experiencing a lost decade for growth. While other countries are already seeing a rise in economic output, the UK won’t return to its pre-crash level for another four years.

“The chancellor’s commitment to self-defeating austerity has prolonged people’s suffering and put the brakes on our economic recovery – so much so that escaping a triple-recession is considered by some to be a cause for celebration. Even George Osborne’s favourite economic institution, the IMF, is calling on him to change course.”

Looking at income per head, the TUC warned the UK would not return to its pre-crash level until 2017. By contrast, income per head in Germany and the US would be more than 10% higher a decade on from the financial crisis.

The TUC said the figures, based on the IMF’s latest GDP forecasts, also revealed how the UK is emerging from recession at a slower rate than at any time in recent history. The report says: “In 1985, UK income per head was 6% higher than it was before the 1980 crash. In 1995, UK income per head was 7% higher than it was before the 1990 recession. UK income per head is today still 6% below its 2008 level.”

Over the next two weeks IMF officials will be gathering information on the UK’s economic prospects from the Treasury, Bank of England, private sector economists, trade union officials and the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility. The IMF deputy managing director, David Lipton, is then expected to hold a news conference on or around 22 May at the end of the discussions.

IMF officials caused embarrassment for Osborne last month when, alarmed at the flatlining of the British economy in 2011 and 2012, they urged him to do more to boost growth and to rethink plans to cut the structural budget deficit by 1% of national income in 2013-14.

The Washington-based organisation was initially a strong supporter of the coalition’s approach to tackling the UK’s record peacetime budget deficit. But its chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, singled out the UK as a country that had the scope to ease fiscal policy to boost growth. Osborne was particularly irritated by Blanchard’s comment that the UK was “playing with fire” by refusing to change tack.

Osborne, however, will stand firm at meetings with the IMF delegation. Treasury officials intend to show that any change to the strategy they have followed for the last three years would damage the government’s credibility in the financial markets and the subsequent increase in long-term interest rates would outweigh any benefits from cutting taxes or increasing spending.

The Treasury will say that the economy is gradually on the mend and that the IMF’s anxiety about the weakness of growth has already been addressed in recent policy initiatives. They will also say that the sluggishness of the economy in 2012 was a result of the drop in exports to the crisis-hit eurozone, rather than weak consumer spending.

The TUC argues that many eurozone economies, including France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, are recovering faster in GDP per head terms and so Osborne “cannot blame Europe for the UK’s economic woes”. It wants the chancellor to ease off on austerity and focus more on jobs and spurs to growth and confidence such as an extensive house building programme.

“He should start learning from countries like the US whose ambitious programme of investment in jobs is helping to turn its economy around,” said O’Grady.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “This is an own goal by Labour’s paymasters. This analysis starts in 2008 and so includes the biggest recession in modern history – which happened under Labour. Clearing up the mess we inherited won’t happen overnight.”

Chris Leslie, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “George Osborne should not arrogantly dismiss the advice of hte IMF team flying into London this week. It is time the chancellor listened to their warnings that his failing economic poilicies are plahing with fire and that Britian now needs a plan ‘B for jobs and growth.”

The IMF cut its forecast for UK growth in both 2013 and 2014 last month. Its publication – the half-yearly World Economic Outlook – said GDP would rise by 0 .7% this year and by 1.5% in 2014 – in both cases a cut of 0.3 points from its last set of predictions in January.

TUC warns of ‘lost decade’ as IMF arrives to scrutinise UK economy

Officials to investigate economic outlook as unions argue austerity policies are causing UK to lag behind in global recovery

International Monetary Fund officials arrive in London today for their annual health check of Britain’s economy as the government faces a fresh warning its austerity drive is causing a “lost decade of growth”.

Echoing the IMF’s recent warning that George Osborne, the chancellor, needed to ease up on austerity cuts in the face of a stagnant economy, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has argued that the UK is being left behind in the global recovery.

It said the UK is experiencing a slower economic recovery than 23 of the 33 advanced economies monitored by the IMF. The TUC report, issued to coincide with the arrival of the IMF mission, also claims the vast majority of eurozone countries are performing better.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We truly are experiencing a lost decade for growth. While other countries are already seeing a rise in economic output, the UK won’t return to its pre-crash level for another four years.

“The chancellor’s commitment to self-defeating austerity has prolonged people’s suffering and put the brakes on our economic recovery – so much so that escaping a triple-recession is considered by some to be a cause for celebration. Even George Osborne’s favourite economic institution, the IMF, is calling on him to change course.”

Looking at income per head, the TUC warned the UK would not return to its pre-crash level until 2017. By contrast, income per head in Germany and the US would be more than 10% higher a decade on from the financial crisis.

The TUC said the figures, based on the IMF’s latest GDP forecasts, also revealed how the UK is emerging from recession at a slower rate than at any time in recent history. The report says: “In 1985, UK income per head was 6% higher than it was before the 1980 crash. In 1995, UK income per head was 7% higher than it was before the 1990 recession. UK income per head is today still 6% below its 2008 level.”

Over the next two weeks IMF officials will be gathering information on the UK’s economic prospects from the Treasury, Bank of England, private sector economists, trade union officials and the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility. The IMF deputy managing director, David Lipton, is then expected to hold a news conference on or around 22 May at the end of the discussions.

IMF officials caused embarrassment for Osborne last month when, alarmed at the flatlining of the British economy in 2011 and 2012, they urged him to do more to boost growth and to rethink plans to cut the structural budget deficit by 1% of national income in 2013-14.

The Washington-based organisation was initially a strong supporter of the coalition’s approach to tackling the UK’s record peacetime budget deficit. But its chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, singled out the UK as a country that had the scope to ease fiscal policy to boost growth. Osborne was particularly irritated by Blanchard’s comment that the UK was “playing with fire” by refusing to change tack.

Osborne, however, will stand firm at meetings with the IMF delegation. Treasury officials intend to show that any change to the strategy they have followed for the last three years would damage the government’s credibility in the financial markets and the subsequent increase in long-term interest rates would outweigh any benefits from cutting taxes or increasing spending.

The Treasury will say that the economy is gradually on the mend and that the IMF’s anxiety about the weakness of growth has already been addressed in recent policy initiatives. They will also say that the sluggishness of the economy in 2012 was a result of the drop in exports to the crisis-hit eurozone, rather than weak consumer spending.

The TUC argues that many eurozone economies, including France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, are recovering faster in GDP per head terms and so Osborne “cannot blame Europe for the UK’s economic woes”. It wants the chancellor to ease off on austerity and focus more on jobs and spurs to growth and confidence such as an extensive house building programme.

“He should start learning from countries like the US whose ambitious programme of investment in jobs is helping to turn its economy around,” said O’Grady.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “This is an own goal by Labour’s paymasters. This analysis starts in 2008 and so includes the biggest recession in modern history – which happened under Labour. Clearing up the mess we inherited won’t happen overnight.”

Chris Leslie, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “George Osborne should not arrogantly dismiss the advice of hte IMF team flying into London this week. It is time the chancellor listened to their warnings that his failing economic poilicies are plahing with fire and that Britian now needs a plan ‘B for jobs and growth.”

The IMF cut its forecast for UK growth in both 2013 and 2014 last month. Its publication – the half-yearly World Economic Outlook – said GDP would rise by 0 .7% this year and by 1.5% in 2014 – in both cases a cut of 0.3 points from its last set of predictions in January.

IMF team needs to see UK economy’s clouds, not the sunbeam

Christine Lagarde’s inspectors should see that Britain is crying out for investment, not more austerity

Dear IMF officials,

Don’t be blinded by a single ray of sunshine. Britain may have avoided a triple-dip recession, but all the other economic news is weak at best.

At the heart of the problem are the country’s ultra-conservative banks and building societies. Either they are short of funds or reluctant to lend to all but the most financially secure borrower. As Vince Cable put it yesterday, they are working on a “pawnbroker business model” demanding “heaps of collateral” that he likened to a gold watch.

The result is that few small and medium-sized businesses can access the cheap credit on offer from the Bank of England.

Homebuyers are in a similar fix. Some estate agents report that cash buyers make up almost 50% of the house purchases in recent months. Housebuilding remains at levels not seen since the 1920s.

As you pointed out on your visit last year, the Treasury has room for manoeuvre should it want to promote growth. The trouble is that all the fiscal loosening this year will just go to overstressed hospitals, a bigger pension bill and a school system coping with a baby boom. There was little extra in the last budget for investment.

Among the voices over here calling for a more cautious approach to austerity are the former City regulator Lord Turner, who warned yesterday that the slowdown caused by aggressive cuts could trigger a cycle of debt.

“I think the difficulty is that when the public debt levels go up in the crisis you feel you’ve got to get that under control …” said the former Financial Services Authority chairman. “But if you try and get it under control quickly, by cutting public expenditure or increasing taxes in the short term, you can enter a cycle where the very process of trying to get your debt levels down mean you never get the debt levels down.”

You may decide that unemployment at 7.8% is lower than the eurozone average of 12.1% and therefore not too bad. But when combined with figures for underemployment, enforced self-employment and part-time working, a large percentage of the British workforce is not working at full tilt. Employment has risen to an all-time high of 30m, but only because of a rising population.

Which brings us to wages. Average pay rises have remained stuck at 1% while inflation has stubbornly refused to drop below 2% and now rests at 2.8%. Recent industry surveys have put pay awards at nearer 2%, but this still leaves an income gap that eats away at living standards. Until consumers are back on their feet, the UK economy is going to suffer. Businesses are sitting on their hands, waiting for confidence to return.

Even those firms that can access credit are wary of making major investments while the government plays a waiting game, hoping for something to turn up.

Of course, the IMF is compromised by its demands for tighter austerity in the eurozone. It is hard to lecture Britain about missed growth opportunities after backing policies in Brussels that have sent an entire continent into recession. Such a volte face would seem to contradict a stance that has successfully impoverished so many in Portugal, Greece and Ireland.

But surely you can see that the UK is crying out for investment that, in the first instance, could be pursued with public money. These are not Japanese-style investments, like the concreting of river beds, that create short term construction jobs but are of no lasting benefit. The UK needs houses, power plants and railway upgrades. They may not be glamorous but they are necessary, create jobs and get the wheels of the economy moving again.

TUC warns of ‘lost decade’ as IMF arrives to scrutinise UK economy

Officials to investigate economic outlook as unions argue austerity policies are causing UK to lag behind in global recovery

International Monetary Fund officials arrive in London today for their annual health check of Britain’s economy as the government faces a fresh warning its austerity drive is causing a “lost decade of growth”.

Echoing the IMF’s recent warning that George Osborne, the chancellor, needed to ease up on austerity cuts in the face of a stagnant economy, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has argued that the UK is being left behind in the global recovery.

It said the UK is experiencing a slower economic recovery than 23 of the 33 advanced economies monitored by the IMF. The TUC report, issued to coincide with the arrival of the IMF mission, also claims the vast majority of eurozone countries are performing better.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We truly are experiencing a lost decade for growth. While other countries are already seeing a rise in economic output, the UK won’t return to its pre-crash level for another four years.

“The chancellor’s commitment to self-defeating austerity has prolonged people’s suffering and put the brakes on our economic recovery – so much so that escaping a triple-recession is considered by some to be a cause for celebration. Even George Osborne’s favourite economic institution, the IMF, is calling on him to change course.”

Looking at income per head, the TUC warned the UK would not return to its pre-crash level until 2017. By contrast, income per head in Germany and the US would be more than 10% higher a decade on from the financial crisis.

The TUC said the figures, based on the IMF’s latest GDP forecasts, also revealed how the UK is emerging from recession at a slower rate than at any time in recent history. The report says: “In 1985, UK income per head was 6% higher than it was before the 1980 crash. In 1995, UK income per head was 7% higher than it was before the 1990 recession. UK income per head is today still 6% below its 2008 level.”

Over the next two weeks IMF officials will be gathering information on the UK’s economic prospects from the Treasury, Bank of England, private sector economists, trade union officials and the government’s independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility. The IMF deputy managing director, David Lipton, is then expected to hold a news conference on or around 22 May at the end of the discussions.

IMF officials caused embarrassment for Osborne last month when, alarmed at the flatlining of the British economy in 2011 and 2012, they urged him to do more to boost growth and to rethink plans to cut the structural budget deficit by 1% of national income in 2013-14.

The Washington-based organisation was initially a strong supporter of the coalition’s approach to tackling the UK’s record peacetime budget deficit. But its chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, singled out the UK as a country that had the scope to ease fiscal policy to boost growth. Osborne was particularly irritated by Blanchard’s comment that the UK was “playing with fire” by refusing to change tack.

Osborne, however, will stand firm at meetings with the IMF delegation. Treasury officials intend to show that any change to the strategy they have followed for the last three years would damage the government’s credibility in the financial markets and the subsequent increase in long-term interest rates would outweigh any benefits from cutting taxes or increasing spending.

The Treasury will say that the economy is gradually on the mend and that the IMF’s anxiety about the weakness of growth has already been addressed in recent policy initiatives. They will also say that the sluggishness of the economy in 2012 was a result of the drop in exports to the crisis-hit eurozone, rather than weak consumer spending.

The TUC argues that many eurozone economies, including France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, are recovering faster in GDP per head terms and so Osborne “cannot blame Europe for the UK’s economic woes”. It wants the chancellor to ease off on austerity and focus more on jobs and spurs to growth and confidence such as an extensive house building programme.

“He should start learning from countries like the US whose ambitious programme of investment in jobs is helping to turn its economy around,” said O’Grady.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “This is an own goal by Labour’s paymasters. This analysis starts in 2008 and so includes the biggest recession in modern history – which happened under Labour. Clearing up the mess we inherited won’t happen overnight.”

Chris Leslie, shadow financial secretary to the Treasury, said: “George Osborne should not arrogantly dismiss the advice of hte IMF team flying into London this week. It is time the chancellor listened to their warnings that his failing economic poilicies are plahing with fire and that Britian now needs a plan ‘B for jobs and growth.”

The IMF cut its forecast for UK growth in both 2013 and 2014 last month. Its publication – the half-yearly World Economic Outlook – said GDP would rise by 0 .7% this year and by 1.5% in 2014 – in both cases a cut of 0.3 points from its last set of predictions in January.

George Osborne to tell IMF that austerity U-turn would do damage

Chancellor is determined to resist pressure for greater boosts to growth in talks this week, arguing harm would outweigh benefits

George Osborne will warn the International Monetary Fund that a U-turn on the government’s budget plans would do more harm than good when officials from the Washington-based organisation arrive in London on Wednesday for two weeks of talks.

The Treasury intends to reject the IMF’s call for an easing in the pace of deficit reduction and will insist that any change in the strategy is both unnecessary and counterproductive. Alarmed at the flatlining of the British economy in 2011 and 2012, the IMF said last month it was time for Osborne to do more to boost economic growth and urged that he should rethink plans to cut the government’s structural budget deficit by 1% of national income in 2013-14.

The chancellor was stung by the criticism, which was seized upon by shadow chancellor Ed Balls as evidence the government had damaged the economy with an over-aggressive austerity approach.

Despite the government’s poor showing in last week’s local elections, Osborne has no intention of changing course but is keen to avoid a public call for a volte-face from the IMF, which initially was a strong supporter of the coalition’s approach to tackling the UK’s record peacetime budget deficit.

Treasury officials intend to show that any change to the strategy followed for the last three years would damage the government’s credibility in the financial markets and that the subsequent increase in long-term interest rates would outweigh any benefits from cutting taxes or increasing spending.

They will also say that the sluggishness of the UK economy in 2012 was a result of the drop in exports to the crisis-hit eurozone, rather than weak consumer spending.

The IMF has become more concerned about the health of the UK economy over the last year and has called for a rethink of fiscal policy – tax and spending – unless the pace of growth picked up. Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, embarrassed the chancellor last month when he singled out the UK as a country that had the scope to ease fiscal policy to boost growth. The chancellor was particularly irritated by Blanchard’s comment that the UK was “playing with fire” by refusing to change tack.

IMF officials are likely to point out in the discussions that the level of national output in the UK is still more than 2% below its peak five years after the recession began in early 2008. By contrast, the US and Germany have both more than recovered the ground lost in the slump.

Osborne’s team knew about Blanchard’s views but expected any concerns to be raised by the IMF in the Article IV discussions – the organisation’s annual economic health check on its 188 member states – that begin this week. IMF deputy managing director David Lipton will issue advice to the government on 22 May at the end of the discussions.

The Treasury will say that the economy is gradually on the mend and that the IMF’s anxiety about the weakness of growth has already been addressed in recent policy initiatives.

Osborne believes that the “help to buy” measures announced in the budget to stimulate the housing market, and last month’s decision to target lending to small and medium-sized businesses in a beefed-up Funding for Lending scheme, should be taken into account by the IMF before it calls for a budget volte-face. And it will insist that the loss of credibility suffered by the UK from changing course would outweigh any benefits from fine-tuning the government’s financial plans.

The Treasury will argue that budget plans are in line with the advice the IMF has been dispensing to rich countries following the deep slump of 2008-09: that there are other western nations doing a faster repair job on their public finances, despite even weaker growth; the IMF’s view about the need for a different approach is not shared by Brussels.

The European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs Olli Rehn said last week: “The level of public debt is projected to rise to close to 100% next year.

“There really is no case for a discretionary fiscal loosening in the UK. It is important the UK follows through with consistent consolidation of public finances to achieve a more sustainable fiscal position.”

Austerity: an idea on trial | Editorial

The past week has been a particularly bad one for George Osborne and advocates of the Reinhart-Rogoff approach

Over the past week, a series of blows have been dealt to George Osborne’s reputation. First, the IMF’s chief economist warned that the chancellor’s austerity programme was “playing with fire”. Then the latest unemployment figures indicated that the jobs market may be about to turn significantly for the worse. The week ended with another credit rating agency stripping Britain of its AAA rating. While all this was going on, a row raged about academic research that had been cited by the chancellor in support of his austerity.

In 2010, the Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff produced a paper arguing that countries with public debt above 90% of their annual income hit a tipping point, experiencing much lower growth. The study had been used by the Treasury as a key excuse for its spending cuts. Except that on closer examination by economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Reinhart-Rogoff research was found to be riddled with errors, from inappropriate weighting of the statistics to a howler over the use of an Excel spreadsheet. As if to rub in the schoolboy nature of some of these errors, the key researcher in the Massachusetts trio was a 28-year-old graduate student yet to complete his PhD.

It would be tempting to describe this as a terrible week for Mr Osborne, were it not for the fact that that phrase now seems to fit most weeks with a decent amount of economic news. Still, the past week has been particularly bad. The IMF is normally too respectful of diplomacy to take a stick to powerful member-states. And it is usually far too mindful of its own reputation to publicly repudiate a strategy that very recently commanded its emphatic support. Visiting London last summer, IMF boss Christine Lagarde gave even stronger support to the chancellor: “When I look back to 2010 and what could have happened without fiscal consolidation I shiver.” Not immaterial in all of this is that Ms Lagarde counts Mr Osborne as a friend: he was the first major finance minister to back her bid to be head of the IMF. In the course of just a few days, the chancellor has decisively lost one of his key personal and institutional allies. He must now prepare for a showdown next month when Fund economists visit London to make their annual inspection.

We can imagine just how embattled the government will be this summer. Take this coming week; it may be that the GDP figures on Thursday show that the UK has narrowly avoided a triple-dip recession – a result that would once have provided rhetorical ammo for the Treasury but will now be easily deflected by any TV interviewer toting a couple of choice quotes from the IMF. Then there will be next month’s local elections. And the setting of a spending review for June is bound to provoke months of mutinous muttering from ministers in charge of unprotected departments (see Vince Cable, Theresa May and Philip Hammond). But the events of the past week also show up the rottenness of our economic policymaking process. The Reinhart-Rogoff argument about a tipping point for debt was influential around the world. Yet the idea that there could be a natural cap for debt, which, when breached, would usher in sharply lower growth, is absurd.

Such mechanical explanations don’t fit with history: in 1945, Britain had debt of 220% of GDP but no economic disaster struck. Nor do they fit with commonsense: why should high debt produce low growth rather than, as is happening now, low growth lead to higher debt? Yet this study and others of similarly murky worth were cited by everyone from Paul Ryan to the austerity crowd in Brussels, and heeded by institutions such as the IMF. Put all this together, and a picture emerges of academics overselling a simplistic argument that is conducive to ministers’ yen for austerity and so gets further simplified for political purposes. The past week has dented Mr Osborne’s reputation; but it should be a chastening one for economic policymakers in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington, too.

George Osborne boosts funding for lending scheme before IMF visit

Chancellor to beef up £80bn loans scheme amid US calls for Britain to tone down austerity measures

George Osborne will announce an expansion of the Bank of England’s £80bn funding for lending scheme (FLS) ahead of a visit to Britain by the International Monetary Fund next month, as he seeks to head off calls for a softening of government austerity plans.

High-street banks are to be given added incentives to extend credit to small and medium-sized businesses in an expansion to the scheme, due in the next fortnight.

An IMF mission arrives in London for two weeks of talks on 8 May and Osborne plans to launch the beefed-up FLS in an attempt to persuade the fund that the coalition can boost growth without doing a U-turn on its deficit-reduction strategy. Discussions between the Treasury and the Bank have concluded that high-street lenders need further inducement to pass on the benefits of subsidised lending to companies.

The FLS was launched last August and offered subsidised credit to high street banks, provided they passed on the benefits to households and businesses. Figures so far have shown a pick-up in lending for mortgages but no increase in business lending. The Bank always envisaged that it would take time for loans to SMEs to increase, but minutes of the April meeting of its nine-strong monetary policy committee, released last week, signalled support for an expansion of the scheme.

With the business secretary, Vince Cable also pressing for action to help SMEs, Osborne has been keen for the Bank to increase the generosity of the FLS, but the need to target help to the corporate sector has been given added urgency by the imminent arrival of the IMF for its annual article IV consultation.

Last week, the IMF embarrassed the chancellor by urging a rethink of a tax and spending policy that will involve cutting Britain’s structural budget deficit by 1% of national output this year.

The fund has told the chancellor that it is worried about the weakness of demand in the UK and will be asking whether he has any alternatives to changes his budgetary stance.

The chancellor was stung by last week’s criticism from the fund. He argued that he had already taken steps in the budget to boost growth. He pointed out to Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director, during talks in Washington last week that the government had already adopted a flexible approach to austerity by pushing back the timetable by two years for debt to peak as a share of national output.

But the IMF is convinced that the UK is still operating well below its full potential. It is keen to discover in its talks next month why the economy has failed to respond to four years of unprecedented monetary stimulus. During this time bank rates have been pegged at 0.5% and the Bank has created £375bn of electronic money through its quantitative easing programme.

The fund believes that its rich-country members have generally been over-hasty in their aggressive approach to deficit reduction, and that less of the fiscal pain should have been front-loaded.On Saturday, a communique released at the end of a meeting of the IMF’s policymaking committee said that where country circumstances allowed, governments should avoid responding to weak growth with fresh attempts to cut deficits, focus on the underlying health of public finances once the effects of the ups and downs of the economic cycle were taken into account, and allow borrowing to rise if activity was depressed.

It added that monetary policy alone was not sufficient to produce a lasting global recovery, noting that a credible medium-term plan to improve the state of public finances together with structural reform were needed.

“Eventual exit from monetary expansion will need to be carefully managed and clearly communicated”, it said, reflecting widespread concerns in Washington last week that central banks faced a tricky task when the time came to raise interest rates and to sell the government bonds purchased under QE programmes.