A Reach Regained |
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April 22, 2010
Pundits repeatedly reach for the same metaphor when describing the resurgence of the International Monetary Fund over the past few years. "The IMF has risen like a phoenix," says Ken Rogoff, formerly the institution's chief economist.
Pundits repeatedly reach for the same metaphor when describing the resurgence of the International Monetary Fund over the past few years. "The IMF has risen like a phoenix," says Ken Rogoff, formerly the institution's chief economist.
Before the credit crunch metastasised into global financial crisis in 2008, the IMF was drifting into irrelevance. The relative calm in financial markets and the global economy during the post-2003 boom meant many fewer countries wanted emergency loans. And resentment lingered over its coercive treatment of stricken countries during the 1997-98 Asian financial cataclysm and the 1980s Latin American debt crisis.
Things have changed. Kemal Dervis, head of the global economy programme at the Brookings Institution and a former Turkish finance minister, says: "Compared to three or four years ago, everything at the fund is quite different."
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