The International Monetary Fund and Christine Lagarde personally own an apology to Greece for their mis-steps and forecasts that had a significant impact on the country and delayed the return of Greece to the markets!

Mr Simon Nixon, one of the top journalists of the American newspaper Wall Street Journal, writes that the Fund and the head of IMF have made major mistakes regarding the “Greek case” and the biggest mistake was their refusal to believe that Greece could achieve a primary surplus in 2013.

In his article Mr. Nixon said that Lagarde should apologise to Greeks, too as she did last week when she apologized to British government: “Last week Christine Lagarde made an apology to the UK. What a shame the International Monetary Fund boss didn’t extend a similar courtesy to Greece this week,”.

As the journalist explains the IMF’s warning that the “UK government was “playing with fire” by pushing ahead with its deficit-reduction strategy” did not cause any damage to British economy. On the contrary, it turned out to have a remarkable recovery. However, as Mr Nixon writes, “IMF’s mis-steps in Greece last year had real consequences”.

More specifically, the article mentions that “The IMF’s refusal to believe that Greece would achieve a budget surplus before interest costs in 2013 led to a seven-month delay in the disbursement of crucial bailout funds,” and this resulted to a delay in Greece’s return to bond markets.
However, if Athens capitulated to IMF’s demands for further measures to reduce the “imaginary deficit”, it is almost certain that Greece would face seventh consecutive year of recessionion.

But even if the IMF couldn’t say “I’m sorry”, the journalist mentioned, “its latest review of Greece’s bailout program published this week shows plenty of signs of contrition” since “It talks of “significant progress towards rebalancing the economy”,”.

At the same time another newspaper, the Italian “La Repubblica”, published an article on the extensive efforts of Greece and mentions that there are signs of recovery and an optimistic climate, but it is still early for Greeks to rejoice since unemployment and debt issues are still open.

The newspaper points out, however, that “probably Greece will need a new haircut to be able to exit from the crisis”, but mentions that “GDP rises again and Greece can hope again”.