The following is a direct copy and paste job from a blog I found last week. You'll find a link below to go to for a full read.
A national government should always aim to to design a budget with a view to the economic effects desired, rather than with a deficit target in mind. In other words, tax and spending reform should be formulated to accomplish economic, social, and political objectives rather than to hit a deficit target.
Further, governments will not be able to achieve their budget deficit target even if it were to cut drastically spending on social services (education, health, etc.) and development expenditures. This is because such draconian cuts would be likely to throw the economy into a deep recession that would reduce tax revenues.
If a country has a chronic and crippling shortage of foreign reserves, then the government should negotiate with the multilateral agencies to develop a program that would allow the country to service its external debt, and gradually reduce its trade deficit until it reaches a more manageable level.
Unilateral default on external obligations following Argentina’s experience is always an option. While it is frequently argued that default on debt is dangerous because future access to credit will be denied, that does not appear to be the case, historically. Indeed, entering formal bankruptcy proceedings often eases access to credit markets for households and firms for the obvious reason that relief from debt burdens makes it easier to service new debt.
While budget deficits are likely to raise living standards which will increase the CAD it should always be noted that all open economies are susceptible to balance of payments fluctuations. These fluctuations were terminal during the gold standard for deficit countries because they meant the government had to permanently keep the domestic economy is a depressed state to keep the imports down. For a flexible exchange rate economy, the exchange rate does the adjustment.
Is there evidence that budget deficits create catastrophic exchange rate depreciations in flexible exchange rate countries? None at all. There is no clear relationship in the research literature that has been established. If you are worried that rising net spending will push up imports then this worry would apply to any spending that underpins growth including private investment spending. The latter in fact will probably be more “import intensive” because most LDCs import capital.
Indeed, well targetted government spending can create domestic activity which replaces imports. For example, Job Guarantee workers could start making things that the nation would normally import including processed food products.
Moreover, a fully employed economy with skill development structure embedded in the employment guarantee are likely to attract FDI in search of productive labour. So while the current account might move into deficit as the economy grows (which is good because it means the nation is giving less real resources away in return for real imports from abroad) the capital account would move into surplus. The overall net effect is not clear and a surplus is as likely as a deficit.
Even if ultimately the higher growth is consistent with a lower exchange rate this is not something that we should worry about. Lower currency parities stimulate local employment (via the terms of trade effect) and tend to damage the middle and higher classes more than the poorer groups because luxury imported goods (ski holidays, BMW cars) become more expensive.
These exchange rate movements will tend to be once off adjustments anyway to the higher growth path and need not be a source of on-going inflationary pressure.
Finally, where imported food dependence exists – then the role of the international agencies should be to buy the local currency to ensure the exchange rate does not price the poor out of food. This is a simple solution which is preferable to to forcing these nations to run austerity campaigns just to keep their exchange rate higher. The IMF would do well to reform its charter and adopt this role instead of the destructive role it currently plays around the world.
Read all of it here Modern monetary theory in an open economy
