The OECD is a waste of space.

Catherine Mann of the OECD describes her comfortable life-style in Paris and tells us that “fiscal austerity has been very damaging to individual countries”. Er yes. Some of us (e.g. MMTers) have been saying that for years.

Problem is that at the height of the crisis, the OECD (along with sundry other incompetents at the top of the economics profession) were advocating consolidation / austerity. For confirmation of that, see this Guardian article “The OECD’s deficit fetishism..”.

So my question to Catherine Mann is: “Wouldn’t you be better employed sweeping the streets?”

Or as Bill Mitchell put it in reference to the OECD:

“Now its policy positions leads to the destruction of jobs, the degradation of working conditions for those who keep their jobs, and the reduction in living standards and the rise in poverty. In that sense, it has gone from being a highly progressive and important institution in rebuilding economies to an incompetent bastion of neo-liberalism.

As I have noted in the past, if there were any areas that governments can cut spending with little harm then it is in the support they give to the IMF and the OECD. I would withdraw all funding to these agencies and let them die in their own hubris and incompetence.”