The IMF has sought fit to effectively apologise for seeking last year to encourage the Chancellor to relax his austerity measures. Yes, they got the strength of the UK recent recovery wrong, everyone did, even Osborne himself. The Chancellor had quietly started to relax the austerity programme after 2012 as Jonathan Portes and Simon Wren Lewis make clear.
What governed the IMF's views last year was the weakness of the UK recovery since 2010 and the subsequent largely austerity driven stagnation that resulted in the UK economy - its level of GDP - still below its pre-recession peak; worse than every major country except Italy as the chart shows.
No, Ms Lagarde there was no need to apologise. You and Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the IMF, were simply doing your job.
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