Wednesday, November 14, 2012

(113) An Interesting Lecture

I just came back from a public lecture by Christina Lagarde, the MD of IMF. This is the second time I went to our national institution equivalent to the US Federal Reserve.

She was articulate and very easy to understand. If English was her second language, she must be a fantastic speaker in her mother tongue. Throughout her lecture, I have been listening not only for content but for pronunciation(after all, I have taught English for many years). So far I only detected one "mistake", she pronounced "multi" differently from most news readers.

For my American readers, she said that your country would have to tend to your fiscal cliff and deficit ceiling soon. If not, the projected 2% growth in your nation could be cancelled by the inaction of policy makers. We all know that 0 growth would mean stagnation and that is not good for any country.

My own country fared a little better, but with a 53% of debt to GNP ratio; we are not exactly in the pink of health. Once any nation hit the "magic" number of 60%, things could go out of control and not respond easily to remedy.

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