IMF Criticizes US Budget Cuts as Ill Designed

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged the US to repeal the huge federal budget cuts introduced this year, denouncing them as “excessively rapid and ill-designed”.

It said the deficit reduction programme would be a drag on growth this year.

It forecast growth of 1.9% for 2013, but said it could be as much as 1.75 percentage points higher without the rapid tightening of fiscal policy.

But the IMF added that the overall US economy was improving.

While the recovery had been “tepid”, it said the overall fundamentals had been gradually getting better.

It pointed to a rebound in house prices and construction activity, stronger household balance sheets, an improvement in the labour market, and strong corporate profitability.

via BBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza