Same illness but very different remedies. How vexing.

A financial consultant, Anantha Nageswaran expresses disappointment with the International Monetary Fund. ' Monetary policy: Central banks should continue to use all available instruments to raise inflation, including negative interest rates, where appropriate, while carefully monitoring the potential impact on banks, pension funds and insurance companies as well as market functioning,' opined the IMF. Low interest rates reduce earnings of pension funds, cause asset price bubbles to form and encourage companies and people to borrow in excess, which they may not be able to repay when rates start to go up. The IMF is also advocating fiscal policies to stimulate growth, through increased spending by governments, which will add to government debt. " What the Fund's memo to G-20 tells us is that, when needed, official multilateral institutions pull back from warning the world of the dangers of asset bubbles that are massively divorced from the prevailing and persistent macroeconomic malaise," writes Nageswaran." Maybe their incentives and interests are not aligned with the recognition of dangers of the asset bubble." Why is the IMF blind to dangers of bubbles? Maybe because its own economists have changed their opinion, writes Prof Noah Smith. They found that "each dollar of stimulus spending produces much more than an additional dollar of economic output". Others have found "that government investment boosts the private sector rather than crowd it out". The IMF has realised that its previous policies aggravated and prolonged the pain of recession, as happened to South Korea in the 1990s. Denmark introduced negative interest rate in 2012, starting at -0.1% it has reached -0.65% today. Although banks are not yet charging retail investors for keeping money in banks they are charging companies. People who borrow from banks get interest which is taxable. Easy money has unleashed a construction boom, as property prices have gone up, but because foreigners are not allowed to buy properties in Denmark there is no sign of a bubble as yet. Strangely average retail inflation rate has actually decreased from 2.41% in 2012 to 0.22% in 2016, the opposite of what one would expect. Since the efforts of central banks and governments have failed to stimulate growth discussion is turning to 'helicopter money'. In June 18 members of the European Parliament wrote to the President of the European Central Bank to consider every option including "citizens' dividend, using 'helicopter money', and the buying of bonds from the European Investment Bank". Clearly what apply to rich nations with very low inflation rates do not apply to India with its humongous population and a high retail inflation rate of 5.8%. Yields on German government bonds are negative while yields on our bonds are at 7.16%. Although low growth is a common disease treatments are completely different. What to do?