The new IMF head should not be dictated by the tired, old, EU order

It is not easy to predict where financial stresses that require alleviation by the IMF will emerge next, or what form the mitigation strategies will take. Almost certainly, though, after a period of extremely easy liquidity and associated leveraging in financial markets, the call on IMF advice and resources will be greater than in the past. Its support will have to take new forms. It will also have to sell economic-policy packages to a governing body from an increasingly multipolar world.

Even before we get to that point, it is not difficult to see that with the threats to international trade and investment, and disputes over policy involving the most powerful countries in the world, the IMF needs to play a much more central role as honest broker and arbiter. It has to be an advocate for the often overlooked interests of the entire world, over those of a specific bloc or country. As we on the G20 Eminent Persons Group recommended, we need the IMF’s role to change as a new order emerges. That order has to meet the requirements of a multipolar world, or we will see the world Balkanised.