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The IMFs America problem

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The IMFs America problem

The IMFs meeting this spring was lauded as a breakthrough, with officials given a new mandate for surveillance of the trade imbalances that contribute significantly to global instability. The new mission is crucially important, both for the health of the global economy and the IMFs own legitimacy. But is the Fund up to the job?

There is obviously something peculiar about a global financial system in which the richest country in the world, the United States, borrows more than $2 billion a day from poorer countries — even as it lectures them on principles of good governance and fiscal responsibility.

So the stakes for the IMF, which is charged with ensuring global financial stability, are high: if other countries eventually lose confidence in an increasingly indebted US, the potential disturbances in the worlds financial markets would be massive.

More: economictimes.indiatimes.com

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