The Fed meets today, but nobody expects them to do much of anything. The general consensus is that it will be ages before Bernanke & Co. even hint at raising interest rates.

But the IMF is out with a stark warning to government's the world over. The organization says they must get serious about pulling back the stimulus, both monetary and fiscal. And they're serious. (via FT Alphaville)

New IMF research on government debt, deficits and interest rates. Fiscal deficits and
government debt levels both affect interest rates. Stabilizing debt at post-crisis levels
would imply higher interest rates (perhaps by 2 percentage points). Moreover, there are
important nonlinearities: the impact on interest rates of each additional percentage point
of debt or deficit increases as the initial debt or deficit level rises, pointing to a risk that
government debt could snowball without corrective action. This underscores the need for
governments to announce credible exit strategies now, even if it is premature to begin
exiting from fiscal support.

....

A “fiscal exit strategy” lim