Nikolaus Piper on the IMF's role in the crisis

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is more powerful than ever before, writes Nikolaus Piper in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung: "In point of fact the fund is currently acting as a global central bank. Not in the sense that it is responsible for inflation and money supply, but arguably as a lender of last resort coming to the aid of the global financial system when all other safeguards have failed. The rise of the IMF to this central role in determining international crisis policy is useful to the global economy. Apart from other things, the crisis has shown that a globalised economy has no future without efficient global bodies. The group of the seven major industrial countries (G7) is too small for the task, while the G20 is too heterogenous. The important thing now is to speed up the pace of the fund's reform. One consequence of the crisis has been the rise of the emerging markets in the committees of the IMF, particularly at the expense of Europe. That makes it all the more important, nevertheless, that even under these completely new conditions the fund should remain a first-rate lending institution, that its committees should work more efficiently and that its financing should no longer be dependent on questionable compromises."

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