the imf's particular position and viewpoint on the economic crisis is getting more interesting as what the obama administration is arguing for as a response to financial meltdown becomes more obvious. this in the run=up to the g-20 summit in london...
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Geithner urges G20 to fund IMF-led stimulus
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Published: March 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: March 12 2009 02:00
Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, yesterday urged the world's biggest industrialised countries to commit 2 per cent of their total gross domestic product during the next two years in a coordinated effort to stimulate the global economy.
Mr Geithner said the International Monetary Fund should oversee the stimulus programme and increase its own capacity by $500bn to help restore growth in emerging markets.
"Forceful financial sector actions are critical to rebuild confidence, restore market functioning, get credit flowing and bring stability to the global financial system," Mr Geithner said.
He argued that G20 nations must act together to ensure that markets such as derivatives have better oversight and called for a "framework of capital requirements" to provide a better buffer in bad times. He said that global co-operation was needed to create tools to combat economic crises amid a fast evolving international financial system.
"There has been a lot of talk about reform," Mr Geithner said. "Now is the time for action."
The IMF estimates that the global economy will contract by 0.5 per cent in 2009 and that world trade is likely to shrink by 3 per cent or more this year.
The expanded IMF capacity should be achieved through the existing New Arrangements to Borrow scheme, Mr Geithner said, suggesting that membership be broadened to include more G20 countries. He also said the Obama administration would soon submit legislation to Congress to mobilise IMF gold to help cover additional expenses.
Mr Geithner also urged reform of the Financial Stability Forum so it includes all G20 countries, giving it a stronger mandate.
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FT.com / UK - Geithner urges G20 to fund IMF-led stimulus
interesting too are the changes in the voting patterns within the imf recently implemented:
Quote:
Washington economists press Geithner on IMF reforms
by Lesley Wroughton
WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - More than a dozen high-profile economists on Tuesday called on the Obama administration to delay congressional approval of a proposal on changing voting power at the International Monetary Fund and negotiate more ambitious reforms.
In a letter to new U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the Washington-based economists said the changes to IMF voting power approved in March were "inadequate in the light of the ongoing global economic and financial crisis."
The changes gave some large emerging economic powers like China and India a greater say in the IMF, despite misgivings among developing countries the move did not go far enough to significantly reform the IMF.
In some countries, including the United States, such changes require legislative approval.
The economists urged the Obama administration to take up the issue again at a meeting of Group of 20 leaders in early April, when IMF reforms will be discussed, and to push for a renegotiation of the package.
"We urge you to reopen the package starting in your discussions with other governments in advance of the meeting of G-20 heads of government in London on April 2," they wrote.
Among the economists is Ted Truman, a former senior U.S. Treasury official now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development; Eswar Prasad, Joannes Linn, Homi Kharas, Colin Bradford and Ralph Bryant of The Brookings Institution; Jo Marie Griesgraber of New Rules for Global Finance Coalition, and John Sewell of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
The IMF's legitimacy and relevance must be strengthened through bold measures that will make it more representative of its 185 member countries, the economists said.
SEEKING GREATER RESOURCES AND MANDATE
Measures to increase the IMF's resources and to implement its mandate for exchange-rate surveillance are needed, and it must ensure its chief is selected on the basis of qualifications, not nationality, they added.
The letter to Geithner came days after he told U.S. lawmakers that President Barack Obama wants to reform the IMF to give developing nations a greater stake in the institution.
IMF spokesman William Murray said early approval of the reform legislation was important and includes proposals to put the Fund's finances on a sounder footing, including through the sale of a portion of IMF gold.
He said the changes were a first step to rebalancing members' voting power and included a commitment to additional vote adjustments.
"The IMF has been consulting closely with governments and non-governmental stakeholders on these and other issues central to the Fund's future role, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the Group of 20 summit in April," he said.
But Domenico Lombardi, president of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy and a former IMF board member, said the changes fell short of what was needed to make it an effective overseer of the global financial system.
"The kind of agreement that was reached a few months ago didn't deliver on the expectations in terms of a more drastic shake-up of the IMF governance framework," said Lombardi, who also signed the letter to Geithner.
"Given the current momentum for moving forward more aggressively, the idea would be to have a more courageous view in terms of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions," he added.
Lombardi said the new U.S. administration was widely expected to be more willing to pursue broader change at the IMF. And since Geithner had worked at the IMF, there was also a general recognition that he would be more understanding of the workings of the institution.
"While it was difficult to talk about IMF reform with the previous administration getting so close to the end of its mandate, there is a general sense of hope that the new administration will be more pro-active in terms of engaging more aggressively on the multilateral institutions," Lombardi said. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Jan Paschal)
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Washington economists press Geithner on IMF reforms | IFIwatchnet
so the plan appears to be to use the bretton woods structures--update them both in terms of governance (voting power was based on degree of financial support based on a political arrangement worked out in the 1940s that gave the united states de facto control over the imf, which obviously made it not so much a regulatory institution that hovered over currency exchange in particular as a way of controlling the modulations in capitalist markets as an instrument of american policy, and so an expression of american geopolitical domination) and function.
there are problems with this move, most of which have to do with what it actually might mean or require to jerk the imf away from the ad hoc role it's assumed under neoliberalism as a kind of short-term emergency loan source and ideological wedge for neoliberal "reforms" in the southern hemisphere--which made of it a generator of crisis--and back to some version of what it was set up to do.
what do you make of this movement on the part of the obama adminstration?