Once more into the breach

THE first rule of economics, dressed up in fancy jargon as it might be in textbooks, is as apparent to gun salesmen in Darra as it is to Chief Economists: there is no such thing as a free lunch. Any appeal to the IMF, which we have all but approached for immediate financial assistance, to go easy on us, would violate the rule. It's no small change, after all, that we want from the Fund. If things go through, we are looking at about $5 billion in loans, a multiple of our IMF quota, $1.6 billion. This too at a time when a lot of countries the world over want to be helped out, even if it is money to be simply injected into their banking systems to create some liquidity. So the IMF is going to expect for all of its conditions, no matter how strict, no matter how little sense they make to local economists, to be followed down to the letter.