by Dan Mitchell | May 29, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Government Spending
The International Monetary Fund is a left-leaning bureaucracy that was set up to monitor the fixed-exchange-rate monetary system created after World War II. Unsurprisingly, when that system broke down and the world shifted to floating exchange rates, the IMF didn’t go...
by Dan Mitchell | May 25, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
I wrote last year about why Puerto Rico got into fiscal trouble. Like Greece and so many other governments, it did the opposite of Mitchell’s Golden Rule. Instead of a multi-year period of spending restraint, it allowed the budget to expand faster than the private...
by Dan Mitchell | May 24, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, Taxation
Much of my work on fiscal policy is focused on educating audiences about the long-run benefits of small government and modest taxation. But what about the short-run issue of how to deal with a fiscal crisis? I have periodically weighed in on this topic, citing...
by Dan Mitchell | May 14, 2016 | Blogs, Economics, Taxation
I have no idea whether Donald Trump believes in bigger government or smaller government. Higher taxes or lower taxes. More intervention or less. Sometimes he says things I like. Sometimes he says things that irk me. Politicians are infamous for being cagey, but “The...
by Dan Mitchell | May 11, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation
In my presentations about how to deal with budgetary deterioration and fiscal crisis, I often share with audiences a list of nations that have achieved very positive results with spending restraint. The middle column shows how these countries limited the growth of...
