As the Guardian has noted:
George Osborne is under mounting pressure to moderate his austerity strategy after the International Monetary Fund went public with fears that the pace of budget cuts is too severe for Britain's ailing economy.
The fund said it would be holding talks with the chancellor about his tax and spending plans in the wake of gloomy forecasts that subjected the UK to the biggest growth downgrade of any developed country for 2013 and 2014.
Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, singled out Britain as a country that needed to adopt a less aggressive approach to deficit reduction.
Speaking at the release of the fund's half-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO), Blanchard said: "In the face of very weak private demand, it may be time to consider adjustment to the original fiscal plans."
What's the significance, beyond the obvious fact that Osborne has got this very badly wrong.
Well, the Tories have always liked to say that when Denis Healey had to turn to the IMF it was a sign of failure. But at least he know what he had to do. What's clear is that the IMF don't have that confidence in Osborne. And that's the significance of this.
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I read Healey has said since that the information given to him by the treasury officials was not complete and going to the IMF could have been avoided.
Does anyone know if this is so?
The other difference between Healey and Osbourne though, is that the ConDem policy is deliberate “restructuring” to roll back public services, the welfare state. wages and woking conditions.
They are already attacking health & safety legislation in order to do away with “red tape” for employers.
The aim seems to be to turn the UK into one big tax haven and to privatise as much public assets as possible.
The Post Office pension fund (which gained them big surpluses, by hte way) was only brought into the public domain in order to make the Post Office more attractive to buyers who may have been put off by the large liablilities of the Post Office pension fund.
Wasn’t Healey fooled into negotiations with the IMF as a result of some botched calculations [or pure duplicity] from the Treasury?
Probably