Muzzling The IMF

The censored IMF table (click to enlarge)

Our terminal floundering "government" has shown it's still capable of one thing - attempting to suppress the truth.

They've managed to bludgeon the IMF into the extraordinary act of expunging an embarrassing forecast from a paper already published. The IMF has removed their forecast of the UK's bank bailout costs from their weighty Global Financial Stability Report issued yesterday.

As we said yesterday, the IMF's forecast is truly shocking. Their economists reckon that UK taxpayers face a bank bailout bill of 13.4% of GDP, or around £200bn. That's higher than any other G7 economy, and only a smidge behind Ireland (see table above).

Of course, in the real world, the Stallion of Truth has already bolted - too many people like Tyler have already downloaded a copy. And while the IMF's top management have had their arms twisted, we now know what the IMF's economists actually think (remembering that the IMF has a long history of only publishing sanitised versions of its forecasts, pre-approved by key member governments, such as ours).

We must confess we haven't read the entire 240 page IMF report, but a quick perusal reveals other awkward comments on Brown's economic stewardship.

For example, they highlight how he presided over the biggest bank credit bubble in the history of modern crashes. They say:

"... the rise in bank credit in the United Kingdom has been massive, and has been greater in the United States and European Union than in Japan in the years preceding its bubble."

And here's their eye-popping chart:

Bear this in mind when Darling starts banging on about... er... "investing for the future".