Since the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis, it has been open season for attacks on the International Monetary Fund. We have been told that the prospect of IMF bailouts caused the crisis and that the IMF's existence, if continued unchanged, will result in many more financial disruptions. Distinguished former cabinet officials, writing on this page, have asked "Who Needs the IMF?" And this newspaper has added its editorial voice to the chorus.
Here's a more balanced perspective: In a globalized economy, everyone needs the IMF. Without the IMF, the world economy would not become an idealized fantasy of perfectly liquid, completely informed, totally unregulated capital markets. Investors and lenders would still make decisions on the basis of imperfect information, and they would have to take into account the absence of an international lender of last resort. This would be a serious, perhaps devastating, defect. In fact, we got a good sense of life without the IMF in the 1920s and 1930s. The results included widespread competitive devaluation and trade wars in response to balance of payments problems, followed by a plunge into global depression and world war.
Without a guarantor of international liquidity, many good loans would not be made. Fundamentally sound private investment projects in emerging markets can be dragged down by decisions external to the businesses involved. Even prudent government policies can be waylaid by unforeseeable shocks. Either way, fundamentally good investments will run into temporary liquidity problems. In a world of flexible exchange rates, such temporary problems can be magnified by accompanying drops in the value of the domestic currency. IMF programs finance the adjustment necessary to give these countries and firms time to let their fundamentals pay off.
Credit Union
Thus, the IMF is the sovereign nations' credit union. It imposes strict conditions on countries' policies for bridge loans to get through hard times. Only a multilateral institution like the IMF could exert the discipline required without causing an unacceptable affront to a country's sovereignty. The benefits to the borrowing nation are that the adjustment program will be less painful and any resulting contraction less severe. The benefits to the lending countries are not only the availability of those credits to themselves, if and when they need them (as even the United States has), but a smaller contraction of world demand associated with the borrowing country's adjustment.
Some have claimed that these IMF conditions have been misapplied in the Asian crisis, demanding either too much austerity or unjustified structural reform. But IMF conditionality is highly pragmatic. Since the current crisis was not caused in large part by macroeconomic policies but by financial fragility and lack of transparency, the conditions were designed to respond to those causes. The fund has been ready to renegotiate its programs and to loosen austerity (such as the inflation target for South Korea) as matters stabilized. There always is room for improvement in individual IMF programs. But attacks on the basic idea of IMF conditionality are thoroughly misguided.
Events in emerging markets have spillover effects on the world economy as a whole, including the United States. Growing economies provide greater opportunities for investment and exports, so an institution that sustains productive capital flows to developing countries also sustains our own economic growth. More important, countries that run into significant balance of payments problems would have only two policy options without the IMF: default or devaluation. As seen in the interwar years, either can induce reactions by other countries that make a bad situation worse; together, they can make the global economy rapidly spiral downward. This chain of events is precisely what the IMF was created to prevent.
A cycle of competitive devaluations is the most dangerous potential chain of events the IMF prevents. Imagine that an emerging market in trouble over its balance of payments decides that it must export its way out and so devalues or depreciates its currency. Economies with similar exports and markets find themselves competitively disadvantaged, so they too devalue, hoping to offset the first country's currency gambit. Yet, if many countries pursue this strategy simultaneously, none of their positions improve significantly, while their purchasing power drops along with their currencies. It must be considered a triumph of the IMF's rapid response to the recent Asian crisis that no ongoing spiral of competitive devaluation has arisen despite the pressures on Hong Kong and China and even on Brazil and Russia.
All these virtues of the IMF have been forgotten in the rush to condemn one of its inherent costs: the creation of moral hazard. Moral hazard exists whenever insurance is provided against any kind of risk. Anyone who has worked in the banking industry knows that government guarantees, or even the perceived possibility thereof, can create perverse incentives for financial risk taking. The prospect of a rescue can encourage investments that otherwise would not be made. This increases the herdlike behavior of global capital since financial firms often watch what other investors do more than they watch the performance of the actual investments. This tendency certainly contributed to the surge of capital flows into South Korea, Indonesia, and their neighbors, and the subsequent drain of that capital.
It is a huge exaggeration, however, to suggest that the so-called bailout guarantee played more than a minor role in creating the Asian crisis. It is absurd to believe that any country would risk a national currency crisis simply because the tender mercies of the IMF were waiting to rescue it from its follies. The pain imposed by IMF programs deters crises rather than bringing them on.
As for private investors who put money into these economies--in the form of foreign direct investment, equities, commercial paper, and even many foreign currency loans to nonbank businesses--significant losses have been taken in every single country. Market discipline has in fact hit all domestic investors and their intermediaries in these countries hard. Many government and financial officials who contributed to the problem have had their careers ended as well.
Too Much Protection
There was indeed too much protection for the loans of some foreign banks. Here the IMF needs to move toward greater reliance on private financial workouts than excessively large rescue programs. Substantial burden sharing by all foreign creditors must also become an integral part of all future IMF programs. But saying that there is room for increasing the degree of market discipline is not the same as saying that market discipline is entirely lacking, let alone that its absence caused the Asian crisis.
In any event, such a moral hazard cost hardly outweighs all the benefits of IMF programs. The relevant comparison is between the explosive growth and macroeconomic stability we have experienced in the postwar decades, with the IMF in existence, and the much slower growth in the developing countries and far greater worldwide instability we saw in the interwar years or in the late nineteenth century. Only part of the differences can be attributed to the IMF, but it is illogical to ignore its contribution while attributing to it total responsibility for the few short financial crises of the past decades.
这是它的官方网站：
http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm
http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm
Overview
The IMF works to foster global growth and economic stability. It provides policy advice and financing to members in economic difficulties and also works with developing nations to help them achieve macroeconomic stability and reduce poverty.
What we do
The IMF promotes international monetary cooperation and exchange rate stability, facilitates the balanced growth of international trade, and provides resources to help members in balance of payments difficulties or to assist with poverty reduction.
How we do it
Through its economic surveillance, the IMF keeps track of the economic health of its member countries, alerting them to risks on the horizon and providing policy advice. It also lends to countries in difficulty, and provides technical assistance and training to help countries improve economic management. This work is backed by IMF research and statistics.
Collaborating with others
The IMF works with other international organizations to promote growth and poverty reduction. It also interacts with think tanks, civil society, and the media on a daily basis.
How we do it
Through its economic surveillance, the IMF keeps track of the economic health of its member countries, alerting them to risks on the horizon and providing policy advice. It also lends to countries in difficulty, and provides technical assistance and training to help countries improve economic management. This work is backed by IMF research and statistics.
Our Work
The IMF's fundamental mission is to help ensure stability in the international system. It does so in three ways: keeping track of the global economy and the economies of member countries; lending to countries with balance of payments difficulties; and giving practical help to members.
Surveillance
The IMF oversees the international monetary system and monitors the financial and economic policies of its members. It keeps track of economic developments on a national, regional, and global basis, consulting regularly with member countries and providing them with macroeconomic and financial policy advice.
Technical Assistance
To assist mainly low- and middle-income countries in effectively managing their economies, the IMF provides practical guidance and training on how to upgrade institutions, and design appropriate macroeconomic, financial, and structural policies.
Lending
The IMF provides loans to countries that have trouble meeting their international payments and cannot otherwise find sufficient financing on affordable terms. This financial assistance is designed to help countries restore macroeconomic stability by rebuilding their international reserves, stabilizing their currencies, and paying for imports—all necessary conditions for relaunching growth. The IMF also provides concessional loans to low-income countries to help them develop their economies and reduce poverty.
The primary mission of the IMF is to provide financial assistance to countries that experience serious financial and economic difficulties using funds deposited with the IMF from the institution's 185 member countries. Member states with balance of payments problems, which often arise from these difficulties, may request loans to help fill gaps between what countries earn and/or are able to borrow from other official lenders and what countries must spend to operate, including to cover the cost of importing basic goods and services. In return, countries are usually required to launch certain reforms, which have often been dubbed the "Washington Consensus". These reforms are generally required because countries with fixed exchange rate policies can engage in fiscal, monetary, and political practices which may lead to the crisis itself. For example, nations with severe budget deficits, rampant inflation, strict price controls, or significantly over-valued or under-valued currencies run the risk of facing balance of payment crises. Thus, the structural adjustment programs are at least ostensibly intended to ensure that the IMF is actually helping to prevent financial crises rather than merely funding financial recklessness.
Two criticisms from economists have been that financial aid is always bound to so-called "Conditionalities", including Structural Adjustment Programs. It is claimed that conditionalities (economic performance targets established as a precondition for IMF loans) retard social stability and hence inhibit the stated goals of the IMF, while Structural Adjustment Programs lead to an increase in poverty in recipient countries.[18]
One of the main SAP conditions placed on troubled countries is that the governments sell up as much of their national assets as they can, normally to western corporations at heavily discounted prices.
That said, the IMF sometimes advocates "austerity programmes," increasing taxes even when the economy is weak, in order to generate government revenue and balance budget deficits, which is Keynesian policy. Countries are often advised to lower their corporate tax rate. These policies were criticised by Joseph E. Stiglitz, former chief economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank, in his book Globalization and Its Discontents.[19] He argued that by converting to a more Monetarist approach, the fund no longer had a valid purpose, as it was designed to provide funds for countries to carry out Keynesian reflations, and that the IMF "was not participating in a conspiracy, but it was reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community."[20].
Argentina, which had been considered by the IMF to be a model country in its compliance to policy proposals by the Bretton Woods institutions, experienced a catastrophic economic crisis in 2001, which some believe to have been caused by IMF-induced budget restrictions — which undercut the government's ability to sustain national infrastructure even in crucial areas such as health, education, and security — and privatization of strategically vital national resources.[21] Others attribute the crisis to Argentina's misdesigned fiscal federalism, which caused subnational spending to increase rapidly.[22] The crisis added to widespread hatred of this institution in Argentina and other South American countries, with many blaming the IMF for the region's economic problems.[23] The current — as of early 2006 — trend towards moderate left-wing governments in the region and a growing concern with the development of a regional economic policy largely independent of big business pressures has been ascribed to this crisis.
Another example of where IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes aggravated the problem was in Kenya. Before the IMF got involved in the country, the Kenyan central bank oversaw all currency movements in and out of the country. The IMF mandated that the Kenyan central bank had to allow easier currency movement. However, the adjustment resulted in very little foreign investment, but allowed Kamlesh Manusuklal Damji Pattni, with the help of corrupt government officials, to siphon off billions of Kenyan shillings in what came to be known as the Goldenberg scandal, leaving the country worse off than it was before the IMF reforms were implemented.[citation needed] In an interview, the former Romanian Prime Minister Tăriceanu stated that "Since 2005, IMF is constantly making mistakes when it appreciates the country's economic performances".[24]
Overall the IMF success record is perceived as limited.[citation needed] While it was created to help stabilize the global economy, since 1980 critics claim over 100 countries (or reputedly most of the Fund's membership) have experienced a banking collapse that they claim have reduced GDP by four percent or more, far more than at any time in Post-Depression history.[citation needed] The considerable delay in the IMF's response to any crisis, and the fact that it tends to only respond to them or even create them[25] rather than prevent them, has led many economists to argue for reform. In 2006, an IMF reform agenda called the Medium Term Strategy was widely endorsed by the institution's member countries. The agenda includes changes in IMF governance to enhance the role of developing countries in the institution's decision-making process and steps to deepen the effectiveness of its core mandate, which is known as economic surveillance or helping member countries adopt macroeconomic policies that will sustain global growth and reduce poverty. On June 15, 2007, the Executive Board of the IMF adopted the 2007 Decision on Bilateral Surveillance, a landmark measure that replaced a 30-year-old decision of the Fund's member countries on how the IMF should analyse economic outcomes at the country level.
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