The IMF sure has changed its tune – but it’s probably too late to stop it:
BRUSSELS — The International Monetary Fund, known throughout its history for urging governments to slash their budgets, is now worried that a global round of austerity may trigger a new recession and is urging countries to look for ways to boost growth.
On Monday, the agency warned the world’s leading economies that belt-tightening by governments, companies and consumers has been become so aggressive that the global economy could falter because of anemic demand.
“The immediate risk is that the global economy tips into a downward spiral. . . . Even in a less severe scenario, key advanced economies could suffer from a protracted period of low growth,” the IMF said. The agency report urged all but the most debt-strapped nations to boost growth through expansive government budget and spending policies or through central bank measures such as lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy.
And the lack of demand is due to the fact that on a GLOBAL SCALE the wealthy do not want to share with the poor.
Here’s a comment i came across on the site Nature Bats Last, by Kathy C:
Andy, my husband was part of the anti-war protests in the Vietnam era. He tells of the excitement of it, the community feelings, he even gets a bit choked up if I find a youtube clip of Pete Seeger singing songs of protest or recently watching a film about Phil Ochs. When the bulk of the anti-war protestors got what they really wanted, the end to the draft, few like my husband carried on with protesting against the government for various other injustices, while most, now freed from fear of death in South East Asia, dropped out of the movement and back into the mainstream attending only to their own interests. Now he just wants to raise chickens and I just want to grow my garden. We are enjoying the protests but if TPTB could make it all well, then the protesters would rejoin the mainstream and forget that mainstream US feeds off of the resources and poverty of the rest of the world.
I haven’t yet seen a protest sign that says “IMF out of South America”, “leave Bolivia alone”, “stop the embargo on Cuba”, “Bill Clinton out of Haiti”, “stop dumping wastes of the shores of Somalia” http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/10/2008109174223218644.html
“restore the democratically elected President of Honduras”
No the main impetus behind the OWS protests is self interest. Nice to see people wake up to their own self interest. But the poor of Haiti would like them to wake up to the fact that the first world is rich off of the backs of the countries they have impoverished.”
Later, she commented to someone else that if the OWS were to succeed globally perhaps all of humanity would get to live on about $8 a day (about $3000 a year). It would be a giant step up for the billions that are living on $2 a day or less and a giant step down for almost everyone in the richer nations. Are they ready for that?
It’s all going to collapse anyway because we aren’t even addressing all the climate and biosphere degradation we’re doing and it’s changing the living conditions (making it harder) faster than we can even hope to repair it. But to even do that it would take all of humanity to STOP what we’re doing, now. It’s nice to see that the world is starting to wake up, but it may be too late to put out the fire we’ve started in our own home (and there’s no escape).