Tag Archives: IMF

Let Greece Go to the IMF

Share Button

 
The members of the eurozone and the EU have apparently decided that they must heroically rescue Greece, that this is better than having the IMF do it.   Senior figures in Brussels feel that the latter alternative is unthinkable.   I am a little confused about why.   Martin Wolf writes in the Financial Times this week that to bring in the Fund  “would demonstrate that this is not a true union at all.”    But the EU and EMU and not true fiscal unions.  If the citizens of Germany and other more successful countries were willing to bail out the Greeks, then fine;  the EMU would be ready to be a fiscal union.  But they are not; so it is not.   Given that reality, what is wrong with something that “demonstrates” it? read more

Share Button

Restructuring the International Financial System: A New Bretton Woods?

Share Button

The members of the G-20 are meeting in Washington on November 15 to discuss reform of the global financial system.  The first thing to say about the calls for a “new Bretton Woods” is that they overreach, in the sense that it is very unlikely that any changes in the structure of the international monetary or financial system will or should, at this point in history, come out of multilateral discussions that are big enough to merit comparison with the first Bretton Woods. Certainly we are not talking about fixing exchange rates, as the 1944 meeting did. read more

Share Button