Banking report authors say outside bodies should have seen warning signs
Irish Independent, 12 June 2010
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission (EC) "failed" Ireland in the boom years by not pointing out the threats to our economy, the authors of a major report on the banking crisis said yesterday.
Appearing before the Oireachtas Finance Committee, renowned economists Klaus Regling and Max Watson said the IMF had done the "wrong analysis" and come to the "wrong conclusions" on the Irish growth story.
"We [the EC and the IMF] all failed, for all of our member states, to identify more clearly the combination of factors going on in the economies," said former EC executive Mr Regling.
Mr Watson added that if the IMF or other international bodies had made the link between Ireland's property bubble and the country's unstable tax base, that "could have helped" contain the collapse.
