| Adam Lerrick | ||||||
It is July, and Adam Lerrick is on a roll. The conservative Carnegie Mellon economics professor and adviser to the US Congress is saying that Brazil is no different to United Airlines: in neither case should public money bail out private creditors. Brazil is "a political problem which has economic consequences" he says, and although the Brazilian people are perfectly free to elect a leftist as president, it's not the job of the IMF to step in and provide enough money to minimize those consequences.
"The new IMF, the new US Treasury, no longer have any sympathy for the idea of large-scale bailouts," Lerrick says. If and when the next Brazilian administration starts implementing fiscally responsible policies of its own accord, then and only then should the IMF step in to help reduce the cost that ordinary Brazilians must pay.