Washington Post on A16

[Seth Ackerman]

Brad De Long wrote:

> Damned if I understand why Sachs signed the Meltzer Report. His beef 
> (and my beef) with the IMF in Mexico and East Asia is that it didn't 
> loan *enough* money and didn't loan it for long *enough* periods of 
> time, and that it required changes in domestic policy on the 
> periphery that were at best irrelevant--for the crisis was made not 
> on the periphery but in the minds of people in Manhattan.
> 
> 
	That's right: For example, the IMF required Korea to open up its
financial sector to foreign ownership, no?

	But why did the IMF attach those conditions? Was it simply misguided
policy, based on flawed analysis? Or was it that the IMF was advancing the
interests of what Jagdish Bhaghwati calls the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF
complex?

	This goes to the heart of the debate over whether the IMF should be
reformed or abolished: Are the Fund's "mistakes" the consequence of
misguided policy, or of a fundamental conflict between the interests of its
shareholders and those of the countries it lends to?

	Seth