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A website forum in which senior fellows of the Peterson Institute for International Economics discuss and debate their responses to global economic and financial developments as they occur each day and offer insights that others might overlook.
Meeting in London last April, the G-20 leaders declared “that the heads and senior leadership of the international financial institutions [i.e., the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund] should be appointed through an open, transparent, and merit-based selection process [pdf].” When you look at the selection processes for [...]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has had a good year in Eastern Europe. It has been called to help numerous countries and it has acted fast and generously. It has learned several lessons from the East Asia financial crisis of 1997–98, which was very similar. The East European crisis is primarily [...]
Buried in the avalanche of meaningless press releases from Istanbul is a highly significant item. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, “has proposed the appointment of Naoyuki Shinohara to the position of deputy managing director. Mr. Shinohara, a former vice minister of finance for international affairs of Japan, will [...]
Strong advocates of our new G-20 process are convinced that it will bring legitimacy to international economic policy discussions, rule-making, and crisis interventions. Certainly, it’s better than the G-7/G-8 pretending to run things—after all, who elected them?
But who elected the G-20? The answer is: no one. And, [...]
The headline news from the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh is that progress has been made on “IMF reform,” meaning increased voting power for emerging markets relative to rich countries—remember that Western Europeans are greatly overrepresented at the IMF for historical reasons. But further change in a sensible direction is [...]
How has the IMF fared in relation to the crisis? The assessment has to be in relation to the three stages of the crisis: the run-up, clean-up, and follow-up. My assessment would be something like: cock-up in the run-up; thumbs-up for the clean-up, and doubts about the follow-up. Here’s [...]
As we wade through a long line of international economic meetings—G-20 ministers of finance last week, G-20 heads of government in Pittsburgh coming up, IMF–World Bank governors meeting in Istanbul in early October (and all the associated “deputies” meetings, where the real work goes on)—it seems fair to ask: Where [...]
Paul Volcker is always a rewarding read. He is a balanced straight-thinker. With the Internet, the cost of reading Volcker is only the time it takes to read plus the necessary additional effort to think about what he has said. A recent example is Volcker on the economy, the international monetary [...]
In recent weeks we have seen again that bond markets do respond negatively to projections of big government deficits. How difficult will it be for the world’s leading economies to confront plunging confidence in the bond markets by balancing their government budgets? A comparison of the challenges faced by different members [...]
The road show for the guardians of the international economy moves this weekend from London, site of the G-20 summit earlier this month, to Washington, site of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the world’s finance ministers and central bankers. We can hope that these leaders will translate [...]