Published in today's Sunday Independent.
Recovery is not reform. The government's intended path to recovery is
a mixture of borrowing, pay cuts, and spending cuts. All recovery
plans treat the symptoms of a downturn. Global aggregate demand has
been buoyed by injections of capital by governments. There is evidence
the medicine is working. Global recovery looks in sight. Reform
however, is a deeper, and more important, matter.
What kind of permanent changes to the international financial system
do we want to see to reduce the likelihood of prolonged downturns in
the future? Recovery and reform sometimes go hand in hand. At other
times reform hinders recovery.