How Nations Spent Their Stimulus Money

Here's an interesting graphic from a recent IMF report(.pdf) that shows how countries around the world spent their stimuls money. Generally speaking, the more developed the economy, the more it spent on direct aid and the less it spent on investment.
It would have been nice to ditch the scale on top and have the length of the bars represent the stimulus as a percent of GDP in which case, if memory serves, nations such as China, the U.S., and the U.K. would have the longest bars.

Comments

[Carlos Lam:]

The bars should also show how much of the "stimulus" funds had to be borrowed. In the case of the US, it would show that percentage to be 100%. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars that we will be paying interest on for the forseeable future. Keynesian "stimulus" doesn't work; during a depression, debt must be liquidated before an economy can rebuild. However, at least nations like China did not have to borrow to "stimulate" their economies.

Nov 09 10:20 PM