Last week our CGD and Peterson Institute colleague Arvind Subramanian called on the IMF to speak truth to power, in an elegant cri de coeur in the Financial Times. The IMF, he notes: “has not provided independent intellectual leadership, most evidently on the eurozone crisis. And it is unprepared to provide stability for the next big global crisis.”
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde announced at a CGD event on Tuesday that the IMF would provide research and analytic support in three areas crucial to sustainable development: carbon pricing, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and green national accounting, that is, development of new measures of economic progress that take into account environmental costs and benefits not included in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Europe does it. Australia does it. Even northeastern-situated states do it. Everyone's doing it. Let's do it. Let's tax carbon.
In a major departure from the IMF’s traditional focus on narrowly defined economic problems, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde warned today that the world faces “a triple crisis—an economic crisis, an environmental crisis and, increasing, a social crisis.”
Advocates for a competitive, meritocratic selection process for the President of the World Bank are dead right. Allowing the White House to just pick is deeply unfair, inefficient, and a relic of a by-gone age. But why stop there? Here’s my list of international patronage anachronisms that should also go:
A recent Foreign Affairs article by Stephen Krasner suggests that the United States should withdraw all military and civilian assistance from Pakistan in response to the countries increasingly volatile relationship. CGD President, Nancy Birdsall, takes a more measured response and calls for a renewed focus on U.S. support to private sector growth in Pakistan.
This is a joint post with Milan Vaishnav, and Danny Cutherell
On December 8th, CGD hosted its first Pakistan study group meeting since the release of its June 2011 report on the U.S. development strategy in Pakistan. Our focus was on how the United States could better support the private sector, especially small business, in Pakistan. That discussion—and our ongoing conversation with study group members, Pakistan experts, and CGD colleagues—provided the basis for our sixth open letter (authored by Nancy) to the Obama Administration, available on our website.
This is a joint post with Amar Bhattacharya of the G-24
It is more obvious every day that Europe cannot save itself. A meltdown in Europe would not only hurt Europe and the United States. It would also deal a blow to people’s livelihoods everywhere, with high costs especially to people living close to the margin in the developing world. The blow would hurt right away as trade, remittances and commodity prices collapse. And it would continue to hurt over the next two years and more, requiring a long slow slog of the United States and Europe out of stagnation, recession or worse, and knock-on effects in China, Brazil and other big emerging markets that until recently were powering global demand.
This post originally appeared on the blog of the Peterson Institute for International Economics
A letter to Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Dear Madame Lagarde,
Europe is in deep trouble, possibly on the verge of catastrophe, and as a consequence so might be the world. You represent that world and you need to act quickly and decisively, and I am afraid somewhat solitarily. You need to quickly mobilize international resources to help address the problem in Europe, which in turn would help minimize the risks to the rest of the world.
This post, co-authored by Nancy Birdsall, Milan Vaishnav, and Danny Cutherell was originally featured on Foreign Policy's AFPAK Channel.
Christine Lagarde is now firmly in place at the IMF, and her competence, political savvy, and good humor bode well for the institution and the global economy. Indeed, with the crisis in the eurozone upon us, the results of CGD’s spring survey on how a managing director should be chosen at the IMF may feel behind the moment if not the times—but anyone with five minutes to spare should take a look at David Wheeler’s analysis of the results.