International Monetary Fund

The US failure to approve governance reforms at the IMF is what led China to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Ben Bernanke is the latest prominent voice to employ this narrative. 

The United States has enjoyed the privileged position of largest shareholder and donor at the World Bank and IMF since the institutions’ founding 70 years ago. 

More electricity. Fewer cases of diarrhea. Fewer lives lost to deadly storms.  These are among the objectives of the development planners and financiers meeting next week in Washington at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings. 

Last week IMF managing director Christine Lagarde returned to CGD to make good on a pledge she made two years ago during the run-up to the Rio+20 gathering that marked the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, returned to CGD last week to talk about getting energy prices right. That’s the title of a new book by Ian Parry and co-authors at the IMF.  

Here’s a fact about the IMF reform package, agreed in 2010 in a negotiation led by the United States and since approved by 158 countries, but (embarrassingly and cavalierly) stalled in the US Congress: It would increase Ukraine’s access to IMF resources to deal with its fi...