Every political simulation eventually meets the same player: the one who discovers that spending is popular, taxes are not, and the difference can simply be borrowed. In Lawmaker the arithmetic was already against them — a falling credit rating pushes the borrow rate as high as 18%, and the interest compounds month after month — but there was no floor to hit. Debt could spiral forever, and a government could keep writing cheques the whole way down.
That loophole is now closed. This week we shipped the IMF intervention: a circuit-breaker for national bankruptcy, and the harshest consequence in the game.
First, a warning shot
You won't be ambushed. When debt passes 150% of GDP a country drops to a CCC credit rating — already an 18% borrow rate — and now picks up a new national mood on its country page: ⚠️ Economy on the Brink. It has no effect of its own; the 18% interest is doing the damage. It exists so that every player, journalist and rival in the country can see exactly where this is heading.
At 200%, the takeover
Cross 200% debt-to-GDP and the IMF intervenes. In a single day:
- An emergency budget is imposed — no proposal, no vote. Income tax goes to 50% on every band, and every department's spending is slashed to 25% of the peer median.
- Any budget vote in flight is cancelled. The deficit budget you were about to pass predates the new management, and the new management is not interested.
- The economy crashes. A year-long 📉 Recession sets in and GDP contracts — so the debt ratio you're being judged on gets worse before it gets better.
- The press goes to town. The country's political journalists cover the takeover — naming the terms, and naming the parties responsible.
The one carrot: money at 5%
A bailout is a rescue as well as a punishment, so it comes with exactly one piece of relief. While the programme runs, the country's credit rating becomes a special IMF rating and its debt is serviced at a fixed 5% — far below the 18% a 200%-debt country would otherwise be paying. That discount, compounding with the austerity surplus, is the engine that makes recovery possible at all. You'll find the new rating documented at the bottom of the credit-rating table in the game, part warning, part promise.
| Rating | Debt / GDP | Borrow rate |
|---|---|---|
| AAA | 0 – 30% | 2% |
| AA | 30 – 50% | 3% |
| A | 50 – 70% | 4% |
| BBB | 70 – 90% | 6% |
| BB | 90 – 120% | 8% |
| B | 120 – 150% | 12% |
| CCC | 150%+ · ⚠️ on the brink | 18% |
| IMF | Intervention at 200% · 🏦 under programme | 5% |
The reckoning
Somebody did this. The intervention works out who: every party in government when the IMF arrives, plus every party that voted yes on the deficit budgets that were in force during the collapse, is branded with a new party modifier — 💥 Destroyed Economy. It crushes the party's standing with every voter in the country, and it does not come off when the programme ends: it lasts the entire bankruptcy plus two full years after recovery. Voters remember:
“I'm afraid there is no money.”
Abstained? Voted against? You're clean. The brand only attaches to governing parties and the yes-voters on the budgets that drove the collapse — so how your party votes on a deficit budget is now a decision with a very long tail.
The way out
The IMF doesn't govern for you, and it doesn't stop politics. You can still propose budgets under the programme — they just have to satisfy the conditions: no deficits, and no tax band below 40%. Ease off the emergency rates, shuffle spending between departments, fight the next election — but the books must balance until the Fund is satisfied.
Satisfied means debt back below 100% of GDP. The recession lifts on its own after a year, growth resumes, and between the austerity surplus and the 5% borrow rate the ratio starts falling. Hold it under the line for a few months and the programme ends: budget freedom returns, the journalists write the recovery story, and the only thing left is the brand your voters will be reading for two more years.
Design notes
For the systems-curious: the intervention runs on machinery the game already had. The emergency budget is an ordinary budget record with an unusual author; the recession and the 🏦 IMF badge are two separate national moods (which is why the economy can start growing again while you're still under the programme — that's deliberate, it's your way out); the brand is a standard party-event modifier, the same species as a campaign finance scandal, just meaner. The thresholds — 200% in, 100% out, 50% emergency taxes, the 40% floor, the 5% rate — are all tuning knobs, and we expect to adjust them as we watch the first bankruptcies play out in the alpha.
Which, given the state of certain treasuries we won't name, should not take long.