An outside perspective on the IMF meetings

The IMF has just concluded its spring meeting and some are very optimistic for a very bright, but very different future. "One of the greatest achievements of the meetings should be the rise of developing countries in the world economy," an AP article claims as developing nations gained a 3.13% voting share up to 47.19% (never mind that they have well over half the world's population). Perhaps most significant to the West though, the meetings also tackled issues such as financial reform:

"The IMFC said in a communique that problems in the financial sector were at the heart of the recent global crisis, while strengthening financial regulation, supervision, and resilience remains an incomplete task.

The crisis has demonstrated the urgent need to introduce international regulatory oversight of a globalized financial system, which would create less volatile financial flows for innovation, risk taking and investing in employment, manufacturing and development.

To tackle the issue, the IMF members agreed to redouble efforts to forge a collaborative and consistent approach for a stable global financial system that can support the economic recovery."

Personally, I am not at all optimistic that the largest and most influential economies in the world, namely the United States, will go along with what the IMF says. I think reform in the United States will be disappointing to the more liberal countries of Europe but there will be little recourse for them.

In short, while these meetings probably have been productive especially in that the developing world gained some international influence, I doubt they will be very effective without broad cooperation from the United States.

See the article here: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-04/26/c_13267880.htm