IMF chief criticizes U.S. budget impasse

by kelnchp Sun 29 Sep 2013, 12:01 am

kelnchp: Cain't Let Go Investor; Posts : 268
Join date : 2012-12-31
Age : 53
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Post n°1

IMF chief criticizes U.S. budget impasse

by kelnchp Sun 29 Sep 2013, 12:01 am

International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde urged the United States on Thursday not to “put a brake on this beginning of recovery” by failing to resolve an impasse over the budget and cutting back government spending too deeply.
The fights between the White House and Congress over the budget and raising the debt ceiling are potentially destabilizing, Lagarde said. “It is essential to resolve this — and the earlier the better — for confidence, for markets and for the real economy,” she said.
Sharp criticism of the across-the-board federal spending cuts imposed in March has been a theme of Lagarde’s speeches over the past months. She told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the budget-cutting in this “blunt and relatively blind way caused by sequestration, among other things, is excessive.”
She said U.S. economic growth this year, expected to be below 2 percent, is weaker than what the IMF wants to see. And she said the heavy budget cuts were the main reasons for weak growth this year. Lagarde also said the IMF expects U.S. growth to accelerate next year by about 1 percentage point.
Lagarde also urged the United States to support changes passed within the IMF more than two years ago that would reallocate the quota, or voting weight, that each country wields in the 188-member agency. But the changes cannot take effect until Congress approves shifting $65 billion that the United States provided to an IMF emergency fund into its permanent reserves.
— Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2013/09/19/bb90d020-2162-11e3-b73c-aab60bf735d0_story.html

Now why do you think the USA is dragging its feet to change the voting weight? HMMMM
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.aspx