IMF Back in Business
Suddenly, thanks to the global financial meltdown, the IMF and its French boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, are back in business. The bank's chests may not have enough cash to meet the new demand. The Fund has about $200-billion to lend, a pittance compared with the massive losses in the global banking industry.
Speaking in Madrid yesterday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund said, "This is an interesting time to talk about the future of the IMF, because this is a time of great change, when the future of the International Monetary Fund—and of many other institutions—seems fluid and uncertain."
He added:-
"Of course, the IMF has lived through other uncertain and chaotic times. Indeed, the Fund was born out of the economic and political chaos of the period between the wars: the failed attempts to impose order on the global economy in the 1920s, the Great Depression, which followed that failure, and the World War that followed the depression.
The desire of the founding members of the IMF to avoid a repeat of this chaos explains the objectives that they gave to the Fund, reflected in the Articles of Agreement, to promote global financial stability and to help members to adjust their balance of payments "without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity".
These objectives remain valid today, as we try to manage another chaotic period in the global economy. The question is how to do it, in a global economy which is very different from that of the 1940s.
All around the planet, the people of the world have reacted to the crisis with feelings going from surprise to anger and from anger to fear. It is our responsibility to help building a world based more on humanity and cooperation than on opacity and greed."
Incidentally money is not the only concern for the IMF Chief who is a former Finance minister of France. He is embroiled in a sex scandal with a former married colleague, which the IMF is investigating.