IMF On The Brink of Running Out of Cash; Repeats Risk Of Great Depression

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ByLoSellHi, Feb 9, 2009.

  1. I was just trying out some yield math in another thread. As near as I can figure - and I am *very* open to correction on this - at a Fed Funds rate of 2% or a long rate of 6.5% - the US loses its ability to fund an 11T federal debt much like a credit card holder losing the ability to borrow from one card to pay off another.

    By necessity this would mean either slashing spending on the scale of cutting SS payments in half, or starting to default on Treasuries.

    Are there any useful/readable papers on this? Anybody here sat down and done the math?
     
    #11     Mar 11, 2009
  2. I think it's crazy how the IMF can have 3000 tons of gold. that just blows me away (it is not new knowledge to me; it has always stunned me). Countries just gave it to them to fritter away on 3rd world POS countries who then simply default on the debt.

    But if someone could use a mortgage re-fi, forget it. No money for that...
     
    #12     Mar 11, 2009
  3. Mvic

    Mvic

    http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=avSIPefMdSKk&refer=europe

    March 10 (Bloomberg) -- The International Monetary Fund may turn a profit of almost $650 million next year, enriched mostly by eastern European nations taking emergency loans to combat the global financial crisis, former IMF officials said.

    The windfall would mark a $1 billion turnaround for an organization forecast two years ago to lose $360 million in 2010. Using calculations in a 2007 report led by JPMorgan Chase International President Andrew Crockett, interest and fees from at least $55 billion in new loans may refill IMF coffers depleted since the Asian financial crisis.

    Written off as increasingly irrelevant before the credit market turmoil started, the IMF is undergoing resurgence in money and influence as countries in recession turn to the world’s lender of last resort.

    “If the IMF were on the stock market, I would be filling my boots,” said Claudio Loser, former director of the fund’s Western Hemisphere department and now a fellow at the Inter- American Dialogue, a policy institute in Washington. “It is the ultimate countercyclical institution and it will see an enormous increase in profits.”

    The return to profitability will enable IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn to hire more staff with expertise in international markets, an area he wants to improve. The revival also may shelve plans to sell some of the IMF’s gold reserves, an idea floated a year ago to create an endowment to finance operating costs while loan volumes were low.
     
    #13     Mar 11, 2009
  4. The only thing IMF has accomplished so far is to finance corruption around the world. It's a good opportunity to close it down for good. People you want money, work for it...
     
    #14     Mar 11, 2009