{"id":189701,"date":"2010-02-21T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/21\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-imf-edition\/"},"modified":"2010-02-21T19:42:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T00:42:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-imf-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/21\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-imf-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse, IMF Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The IMF is <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704269004575073610075698010.html\">coming out in favor of capital controls for developing nations<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>International Monetary Fund economists, reversing the fund&#8217;s past opposition to capital controls, urged developing nations to consider using taxes and regulation to moderate vast inflows of capital so they don&#8217;t produce asset bubbles and other financial calamities. It said emerging markets with controls in place had fared better than others in the global downturn.<\/p>\n<p>The recommendation is the IMF&#8217;s firmest embrace of capital controls and a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">reversal of advice it gave developing nations just three years ago<\/span>. The IMF has long championed the free flow of capital, as a corollary to the free flow of trade, to help developing countries prosper. But the global financial crisis has prompted the fund to rethink long-held beliefs. It recently suggested the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">world might be better off with a higher level of inflation<\/span> than central bankers now are targeting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>I think that a lot of this has to do with the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Asian_financial_crisis\">Asian financial crisis<\/a> 13 years ago, and the fact that the only nation to implemented capital controls, Malaysia, was through the crisis with a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">lot<\/span> less pain than their Asian neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>It only took them 13 years, and an increasingly hostile response from the developing world, for them to get the message.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s to their credit that it happened before some high level official visiting a 3<sup>rd<\/sup> world nation in crisis was actually lynched by an angry crowd, which puts them ahead of American investment bankers, Larry Summers,  and Timothy Geithner, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The IMF is coming out in favor of capital controls for developing nations: International Monetary Fund economists, reversing the fund&#8217;s past opposition to capital controls, urged developing nations to consider using taxes and regulation to moderate vast inflows of capital so they don&#8217;t produce asset bubbles and other financial calamities. It said emerging markets with &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004,1017,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-international-finance","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}