Writing earlier today, I wrote that a $5 billion appropriation to the IMF in the war supplemental was likely to have a much lower budgetary cost, because what we’re talking about here is loanable funds. That was a mistake, we’re actually talking about $100 billion in loanable funds that the CBO has scored with a budgetary cost of $5 billion. It’s not totally clear to me how the CBO reached the conclusion “that the present-value risk-adjusted cost of the proposed increase in U.S. participation in the IMF is $5 billion” given that, as the CBO concedes, no countries has ever defaulted on an IMF loan. But either way, the point is that the value created for the world far exceeds the budgetary cost.
Meanwhile, here’s a Progressive Caucus letter on the IMF issue asking for the attachment of some strings. The first two points raised seem perfectly reasonable, but the second two don’t seem like a good idea. It’s worth noting that despite the IMF’s association with “Washington Consensus” neoliberalism, for the past two years it’s been headed by by a French socialist.
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