Holding the IMF to account

DESIGNED to be the international lender of last resort and help countries facing short-run balance-of-payments distress, the IMF has a rich history of being the quack physician that killed the patient. Driven by myopic market fundamentalism and riddled with policy missteps, its advice and actions have too often in the past proven to be detrimental to the long-run interests of its borrowers, whether in Latin America, East Asia, Greece or Pakistan. Since its founding, but more overtly since the 1990s, it has allowed the interests of its shareholders, including the geopolitical objectives of the largest, to trump the well-being of smaller sovereign borrowers.