Advice Unneeded

This needs no introduction, the intellectual elitists in this country believe that only they can steer the US into a workers utopia and it's clear where they get their ideas from. Never mind that the EU is crumbling under the weight of socialist policies that the lib's would love to implement here, it's all about the theory, not the result.

From IBD:

Competitiveness: The International Monetary Fund is lecturing the U.S. about getting its economic house in order. A drunk addressing a temperance society would have more credibility.

At the release of its World Economic Outlook this week, the IMF's chief economist, Raghuram Rajan, called on the U.S. to enact universal health care — among other things.

"It is very, very hard, in this competitive economy, for 40 million-plus Americans to be uninsured, of which 8 million are children," Rajan said. "So you need universal health care, you need strong educational systems, so the challenge of improving education in the U.S., especially in poorer areas, is extremely important."

While he was at it, Rajan said the U.S. should balance its budget a year earlier than the White House's "unambitious" 2010 target.

Timothy Adams, treasury undersecretary for international affairs, was quick to say "no thanks" to the gratuitous advice. Adams accused the 184-member international organization of raising "questionable topics" it has no business to be looking at.

Of course, no one will be holding his breath to hear similarly strong IMF criticism of, say, China and the artificially cheap yuan. As always, the IMF seems to have a bias against rich, free nations.

As Adams pointed out, the IMF was not chartered for purposes of critiquing the economic policies of wealthy nations — let alone the world's economic leader, the U.S.

It's supposed to be involved in less-than-glamorous tasks like working on potential international monetary problems and fostering trade growth. It's also supposed to "promote exchange stability." But the IMF somehow translates that as: weaken the dollar.

This coming weekend at the annual IMF/World Bank meeting, the U.S. will call for basic reform of the IMF.
But fixing a lemon can be pointless. Economist Anna Schwartz of the National Bureau of Economic Research has pointed out that the IMF, in its role as the "international lender of last resort," has a history of bailing out bankrupt governments rather than protecting sound ones that run into liquidity problems.

Like Schwartz, Lawrence McQuillan of the Pacific Research Institute thinks the IMF has outlived its usefulness.

"It is time to scrap the IMF and strengthen market-based alternatives that would promote an orderly and efficient international monetary system," said McQuillan. "Key reforms include floating exchange rates, internationally accepted accounting and disclosure practices, unfettered private financial markets, and fundamental legal, political and constitutional rules that would allow free markets to emerge and countries to achieve self-sustaining economic growth and development."

In other words, most of those 183 other IMF member countries should be getting their economic act together — not the most successful economy in the world.