>Couldn't resist on this one. I take your point vis a vis Brad. But, given
>that these institutions are simply US tools, what difference would it make
>if they did not exist. Eg. In Asian crisis, US simply wrote the "IMF
>program". In Mexico, no different, In Latin American debt crisis, the
>same.
But the IMF gives the U.S. the political cover of multilateralism - and it helps keep the EU and Japan on board. Sort of like NATO's role in the Kosovo war.
Doug