The IMF faces a nightmarish identity crisis

During the imfimflandmark three-week conference at Bretton Woods in 1944, one delegate contrasted the “extraordinarily beautiful” venue—the Mount Washington hotel—with the “glorious confusion” of negotiations. Yet the bedlam gave birth to the world’s most important international economic institution: the International Monetary Fund (), which was founded to ensure global macroeconomic stability. In the nearly 80 years since its creation, the fund has lent $700bn to 150 countries.When the meets for its spring jamboree in Washington on April 10th there will once again be confusion about its purpose. Only this time it will not be glorious but ominous. Like many liberal institutions built after the second world war that could both serve American interests and claim to represent all of humanity, the fund is now ensnared by the Sino-American rivalry. Everyone—including the countries which negotiate and vote on the fund’s governance, the creditors which lend to countries it bails out, and its staff—seems uncertain about the fund’s future.