EXCERPT/more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/worldbusiness/07global.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1223406450-YVvUFoS+UR87noGRZ9W34A“It looks pretty ugly down the road,” said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund who specializes in financial crises. “Everybody is going to get caught up in this.”
The global nature of the crisis and its growing collateral damage ought to galvanize countries to work together to fashion a concerted response, Mr. Johnson said. There is a chance to do that this week, with dozens of finance ministers and central bankers converging on Washington for the annual meetings of the I.M.F. and the World Bank.
The trouble is, these institutions no longer have the resources or authority to lead such an effort. The I.M.F., which played a central role in the Asian crisis, has been relegated to the sidelines this time — its credibility tarnished by that episode and its skills ill-suited to a crisis in advanced economies. These days, it mainly issues lonely warnings about the impact on developing countries.
The Group of 7, which once functioned as a sort of command center for the global economy, is similarly depleted, according to critics. It no longer represents the world’s economic drivers, they said, and badly needs to be expanded to include rising powers like China and India.
“The globalization of the crisis means we need a globalization of responses,” said C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “But most of the responses will be national. For all the institutions we have, we don’t have the right institutions to do this.”
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
