Admonishment About Our Fiscal House From The IMF

There are times when I feel that we are living in a Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode. The Europeans, namely the Germans and the British, whose respective “welfare” systems (The Dole in England) provide succor from cradle to grave, are chastising the United States to curtail its spending to fix our fiscal house. If that isn’t grating enough, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is jumping in line, adding its two cents, telling us too how to fix our economy.

It is not that the Europeans are not right (I have mentioned this fact in past blogs), vis-à-vis our need to save, but I take offense now because everyone seems to be piling on. Look, things are bad, but I don’t think we are in the same position of the Greeks, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese. Ok, maybe California is close, but the IMF, who incidentally is partially funded by you guess it – the United States.

Last year alone, the United States bequeathed to the IMF billions of dollars – I say again to the IMF: you first. Refuse your largesse and maybe we can be better steward of our fiscal house. I know thee are those who are going to say that the IMF job is to offer said critique, but don’t tell me about my benign cancer, while you are smoking three packs of malignant Joe Camels a day. In this same vein, a couple of weeks ago, the paper tigers at the United Nations (U.N.) floated the idea of recommending the replacement of the dollar by a new global currency. A few months before that Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, was griping about the U.S. not paying its disproportionate bill – this is the world that we are living in.

I like to break down issues and take them from the individual's point of view; I do this by placing myself in the person's shoes because the United States or any other country is made up of individuals that make up the collective. To that end, imagined, that you took in my family: myself, wife, and daughter and gave us the necessities. How would you feel that while I am still living at your home, and still receiving succor from you – I told you to kiss my you know what? How many of you would give me the boot…. Need I draw the nexus between my example and the International Monetary Fund?