BROKE AND DESPERATE

The International Monetary Fund speaks and Wall Street in its confusion listens.

Here's a quote from today's front page Wall Street Journal.

Stocks tumbled on escalating concerns about global growth prospects, especially in Europe, as new data showed deepening stresses in the continent’s economy and remarks from a leading policy maker highlighted the lack of consensus in dealing with the slowdown.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid nearly 273 points, or 1.6%, its worst daily decline since July and fourth-biggest point drop of the year. The slump in U.S. share prices followed big losses in German, French and U.K. stock markets.

Long known for its harsh austerity leanings, the IMF for years made loans to strapped countries many believe with conditions as strict as those repayment reparation liens on Germany following WWI many again believe led in part to WWII.

According to today's Financial Times, the IMF claims "there is an almost 40 per cent chance of a eurozone recession in  the next six months, and downgraded other countries outside North America."

That the IMF is now calling for monetary stimulus should strike you as strange and it just might be a clear signal the economic bottom is in.  This bureaucratic outfit's had to change its forecasts more often than someone with a bad case of IBS changes underwear.

Much of this doom and gloom stuff over shadows another drag on things. Bureaucrat-laden places like Brussels and Washington have declared open season on alleged corporate and state wrong doers, "EU's Amazon probe steps up pressure over tax deals," reads another Times headline.

There are two ways to treat over burdensome taxes, tax avoidance and evasion. Until recently only evasion was illegal.

 The political climate in Brussels--and across Europeans capitals--has hardened towards US  companies in recent months, especially in the technology sector.

The decision to probe such tax rulings is not just putting the spotlight on individual companies. By targeting governments alleged to have facilitated corporate tax avoidance, iths opened up another front in the global battle against tax avoidance.

To even the most insensitive nose this has more the smell of money to it than illegality. Toss in the not so small payback motive for how a greedy band of Washington regulators treated certain European banks. And going after U.S. technology is no accident, either. 


Basic translation: Governments are desperate and broke.