[stop-imf] IMF managing director update (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

World Bank Development News, 01/10/00.

NEGOTIATIONS FOR IMF TOP JOB ADVANCING: KOCH-WESER. 

The negotiations  surrounding the choice of a successor to IMF Managing
Director Michel Camdessus 
are advancing, Les Echos (France, p.10) reports German Deputy Finance Minister 
Caio Koch-Weser said last Friday. "I can't really comment on this subject, but 
what I can say is that the political process has advanced," he said on the 
sidelines of the G7 deputy finance ministers' meeting in Tokyo. "There is a 
feeling that we need to come quickly to a conclusion," he added, declining to 
comment on the strength of European support for his candidacy.

The news comes as Jim Hoagland writes in the International Herald Tribune
(p.8) 
and the Washington Post (p. B7) that national pride and national political 
ambition survive into the global era. The hunt for a new managing director for 
the IMF has turned into a quagmire of subterfuge and rivalry among rich
nations. 
The governments that have relentlessly preached to their citizens the need to 
adjust to the era of globalization should take their own words to heart and
see 
that the IMF gets the leadership it needs at this critical moment.

"As we re-examine the role of the Fund, we must not underestimate what is our 
bread and butter," IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer is quoted as 
saying in a Washington Post story reprinted in the IHT. "Crisis lending is a 
critical part of what we do, but it is far from the most important thing we 
do...The Fund is one of the most important ways, possibly the most important 
way, that the international community promotes good macroeconomic policies 
around the world."

Europolitique meanwhile also reports on German press reports that US Treasury 
Secretary Lawrence Summers has proposed to Europeans that if they withdrew 
Koch-Weser's candidacy for the IMF job, the next World Bank president could go 
to Europe. World Bank President James Wolfensohn has already been reappointed 
to a second five-year term, notes the story.