Pulling Together

Michel Camdessus, Director General of the IMF, calls this U.S. Third World Policy Perspectives volume "a remarkably useful contribution to the continuing debate on (the IMF's) policies and activities". Side-stepped by the developed countries, entangled in unsuccessful programs in many Latin American and African nations, whipsawed by heavy but inconsistent pressure from commercial banks and creditor countries to adjust its policies. The authors identify five issues critical to this...
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Michel Camdessus, Director General of the IMF, calls this U.S. Third World Policy Perspectives volume "a remarkably useful contribution to the continuing debate on (the IMF's) policies and activities". Side-stepped by the developed countries, entangled in unsuccessful programs in many Latin American and African nations, whipsawed by heavy but inconsistent pressure from commercial banks and creditor countries to adjust its policies. The authors identify five issues critical to this readjustment: global macroeconomic management, Third World debt, the resuscitation of development in the poorest countries, the integration of socialist nations into the global economy, and relations with its sister institution, the World Bank. They also recommend that the IMF bolster its own bureaucratic, intellectual, and financial capacities. In an economically interdependent but politically centrifugal world, a strong central institution is needed to help countries arrive at collective responses to complex global economic problems. But only if its member states are willing to delegate more authority to the IMF can it help pull together a multipolar world.