Critics are challenging the traditional role of the IMF to facilitate development and alleviate poverty, viewing policies as doctrinaire and in need of change to meet objectives. This examines the arguments and the future role of the IMF.

Critics are challenging the traditional role of the IMF to facilitate development and alleviate poverty, viewing policies as doctrinaire and in need of change to meet objectives. This examines the arguments and the future role of the IMF.

This pamphlet is adapted from Chapter 1 of Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-89, by the same author. That book is full of history of the evolution of the Fund during 11 years in which the institution truly came of age as a participant in the international financial system.

In March 2006, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank commissioned the External Review Committee on IMF-World Bank Collaboration to look at the status of institutional collaboration and provide suggestions for improvement. The Committee’s report, released in February 2007, called for the strengthening of the culture of collaboration in the two institutions, and made a number of specific proposals in that direction. The Joint Management Action Plan (JMAP) was prepared against this background, and the actions agreed between Bank and Fund managements in the JMAP are scheduled to be presented in informal Board meetings in early October. The JMAP will be launched immediately after the Annual Meetings. The goal is for most new systems to be operational in time for the preparation of FY09 budgets.

The twenty-one contributions in this book assess the controversy surrounding the Fund and provide judgments about the criteria for Fund lending which should help readers understand and analyze both its ongoing role in smoothing adjustment to international payments imbalances and its currently critical position in responding to the debt crisis.

In Dance of the Trillions, David Lubin tells the story of what makes money flow from high-income countries to lower-income ones; what makes it flow out again; and how developing countries have sought protection against the volatility of international capital flows. The book traces an arc from the 1970s, when developing countries first gained access to international financial markets, to the present day. Underlying this story is a discussion of how the relationship between developing countries and global finance appears to be moving from one governed by the “Washington Consensus” to one more likely to be shaped by Beijing.

The International Monetary Fund is the centre of a global financial system that encourages budgetary discipline and full integration into world trade to facilitate development and alleviate poverty. Yet this policy 'conditionality' of the IMF is highly controversial. Critics state that fifty years of IMF existence has been 'fifty years too long', and that its doctrinaire policy must change or Fund programmes will have only limited ability to achieve their objectives. This book examines the arguments, tracing the extent of Fund adaptation, presenting major new evidence on the consequences of Fund programmes, and considering its future role.