On 30 November 2015 the IMF voted to include the RMB (the Chinese “people’s currency” denominated in yuan) in the basket of currencies it uses to calculate the value of the Special Drawing Rights, from October 2016. This is largely symbolic but should encourage further international financial reform in China. * What does it actually… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: IMF
Greece repays IMF using the IMF’s own “currency”
Greece this week repaid €750m to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which it funded by drawing on its SDR account at the IMF. This legitimate but unusual move caught many commentators by surprise and drew attention to the little known SDR. * The SDR – Special Drawing Right – is something of a curiosity in… Continue Reading
Slow progress in reforming the IMF
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a great example of an institution that was created for one purpose – to police the system of fixed exchange rates set up in the 1944 Bretton Woods treaty – which has survived and evolved to do something quite different – provide emergency lending and financial advice to countries… Continue Reading
Rekindling the spirit of 1944?
The leader of one of our main international financial institutions argues that we need to remember and learn from the cooperative spirit in which the Bretton Woods international financial system was born in 1944. Unfortunately the creation and later success of that system depended on the economic and financial dominance of a single self-interested nation,… Continue Reading
The international financial system isn’t going to be reformed any time soon
In a recent IMF working paper I came across the term “North Atlantic financial crisis”. I hadn’t heard this before and it was the first clue of several that the report was written by Indian economists with a well justified gripe about US monetary policy and the damage done by the international monetary system to… Continue Reading