Europe’s Leadership on IMF Coming to an End?
May 23rd, 2011
Would you want this guy managing YOUR money?
Could Europe’s 65-year leadership of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) come to an end?
In the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s resignation as head of the organization, amid allegations of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York City, there is a growing push by China to give the reins over to a non-European. According to former Federal Reserve official Edward Truman, such a move would be prudent, given the debt and deficit problems plaguing the continent, and calling the arrangement of permanent European leadership an “anachronism” of an era when Europe was king of global trade.
The United States currently gives the IMF $42 billion in payments as of March 2011, roughly one-fifth of the IMF’s budget, which means the American taxpayer would be on the hook for numerous failing European states, even when the US struggles to cope with its own deficit and debt crises. How can Timothy Geithner even think to give the IMF so much money, without congressional approval, to be loaned to nations that might never be able to pay the money back, when that money could be put to more use fixing our fiscal problems before we turn into Greece?
