“Last week, Christine Lagarde apologized to Britain. It is a pity that the boss of the International Monetary Fund did not show the same courtesy towards Greece this week, “wrote columnist of Wall Street Journal, Mr. Simon Nixon.
As he explained, the IMF warning that British government is “playing with fire” with its strategy of austerity caused no damage, given that the economy is experiencing an impressive recovery. But the mistakes made by the IMF in the case of Greece last year, had real consequences.
Specifically, the IMF’s refusal to believe that Greece would achieve a primary surplus in 2013, led to a seven-month delay in the disbursement of crucial bailout loans, which resulted for Athens to delay to return to the bond markets.

If Athens had back down to the IMF demands for further measures to reduce the “fantastic deficit” as characteristically was mentioned, it is almost certain that Greece would have faced a seventh year of recession.

But even if the IMF fails to utter apologies, the last assessment report shows several signs of remorse, feels Mr. Nixon, after talking amongst other things , of a significant progress in rebalancing the economy.