CGD Policy Blogs

IMF and Participants at the upcoming meetings of the IMF and World Bank in early October are bound to promise with considerable conviction an increase and an improvement in international coordination of domestic financial regulators -- just as U.S. Treasury and Fed officials are now promising, with considerable conviction, to revisit and reform the rules and the coordination of a currently fragmented regulatory set-up within the U.S.

Sen. Robert Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development and Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and International Environmental Protection, said he was proud to support any initiative highlighting the global development agenda for the next U.S. president during CGD’s Capitol Hill discussion of The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President last week.

I have been following the lively exchanges begun by Liliana Rojas-Suarez’s post on the development impacts of the U.S. financial crisis, especially Michael Clemens's provocative post and Nora Lustig’s thoughtful reply.

I think the behavior of both public officials and private sector managers over the past decade is at direct odds with our message to the developing world regarding transparency and accountability. For example, my research shows that influence peddling is a serious impediment to growth in Africa, and that the development community needs to devise solutions that recognize and overcome such problems.