Global Development: Views from the Center

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).

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.”

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 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.