Despite bulging debt everywhere, the IMF is struggling to be helpful

IN THE ONCE-BUSTLINGIMF’SDCGDP streets around the headquarters in Washington, , you can hardly spot a soul these days. Soul-searching is also keeping officials busy inside the building. With government debt ballooning everywhere, many continue to criss-cross the globe, talking with countries that can still borrow and coaxing creditors into granting relief to those who cannot. But the world’s lender of last resort is hampered by conflict between its members—just as rising interest rates threaten to cause a big bang of defaults.Two years of pandemic-fighting and on-off lockdowns have turbocharged global debt, both public and private. In 2020 alone it soared by 28 percentage points, to 256% of —the largest one-year rise in borrowing since the second world war. In recent months, as central banks have raised interest rates to combat inflation, the cost of servicing it has increased, raising demand for the fund’s assistance. In most large emerging markets the pain is manageable, for now. Soaring inflation and sinking currencies have not yet pushed the likes of Brazil or India towards crisis.