The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said globalization of trade has given countries with large deficits such as the U.S. potentially dangerous leeway to grapple with them because foreign investors are willing to finance the debt. The fund warned that if "Investor preferences" change, continuing high deficits in the U.S. could further depress the value of the U.S. dollar. "(Globalization) allows countries to make bigger mistakes," said IMF economic counsellor and director of research Raghuram Rajan Thursday. He added that "globalization does not impose much discipline on fiscal policies. Therefore it does not necessarily force policy adjustment." Rajan made the remarks at the unveiling of analysis sections of the IMF's semiannual World Economic Outlook, which will be made public next Wednesday prior to the start of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. Rajan warned that globalization also "increases the small but extremely costly risk of a more abrupt adjustment - in the current context, involving a sharp depreciation of the U.S. dollar, higher interest rates, and weaker output growth." --More 2233 Local Time 1933 GMT
