The government has also had to tighten consumer credit, to check the trade deficit.
Imports fell as aggressive monetary tightening reduced consumer demand, but exports fell more as a strong currency continues to hurt competitiveness.
"We could be in for a disappointment in the second half of the year," he said, because governments will soon have to begin tightening fiscal policy, and consumer demand remains tepid.
Of course, forecasts are always wrong; but it is worth noting that the National Institute of Economic and Social Research's forecast, published very shortly after the last IMF report, said, "the recovery will continue but it will be sluggish", due to the impact of tightened fiscal policy and depressed consumer demand.
Smartphones are not cheap, and prospects for slackening consumer demand due to tightening budgets prompted selling pressure to sweep across the sector in late 2008.
Germany has been emerging over the last two years from a long period of economic stagnation that pushed up unemployment and prompted Germans to tighten their purse strings, leading to slack consumer demand.
Blame it on QE2 or crazy consumer demand leading to monetary tightening, one thing remains certain about the big emerging markets: they are still the growth drivers in the world economy.
For over two decades, the healthcare industry internationally has sought ways of describing the nature, volume, complexity, costs, and outcomes of its services, to deal with increasing consumer demand, ballooning healthcare costs, and tightening financial constraints [ 3, 4].
negotiating team, insisted that the creditors had been careful to strike a balance between demanding more budgetary tightening and risking further stifling of the economy, notably by hurting consumer demand.
In addition, the turmoil in the subprime mortgage market, and the associated tightening of credit standards, may itself damage growth prospects, by hitting house prices and thus consumer demand (see article).Fears over the banks' fate also showed up in derivatives markets.
