Going down....
"Lagarde is 1st woman to lead IMF; New chief urges Greece to pass austerity package" by Liz Alderman, New York Times / June 29, 2011
PARIS — Christine Lagarde's victory was sealed when Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the United States would endorse her over the Mexican central bank governor Agustin G. Carstens.
Lagarde, currently the French finance minister, said in a statement that she would strive to ensure the IMF remained “relevant, responsive, effective, and legitimate, to achieve stronger and sustainable growth, macroeconomic stability, and a better future for all.’’
Coming from the new leader of an institution destroying just that.
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Lagarde was initially opposed to getting the IMF involved in Greece’s rescue, seeing it as a problem that Europe’s politicians and policy makers needed to resolve. When the IMF entered the scene last year, Lagarde took a hard line on Greece, at one point threatening to withdraw financial aid if the country did not respect its engagements to cut spending and raise revenue.
Yeah, isn't it great a woman is leading the institution?
Moments after her appointment, she urged the Greek government and opposition on French television to pull together to pass the unpopular austerity measures needed to unlock financial aid and avert a default.
Yet Lagarde has also come under fire from those who say she and other senior European policy makers mishandled the situation from the beginning, and are now scrambling to clean up problems of their own making. Geithner last week chastised Europe for failing to speak with one voice on the Greek crisis.
Simon Tilford, the chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London, said the IMF should never have become so deeply involved. “For the IMF to be devoting so much financial and human capital to try to combat a problem in Europe which is largely political in origin and can only be solved by political agreement is controversial,’’ he said.
Like they are doing the people Europe a favor with their austerity programs so bankers can get rich.
Lagarde, 55, a former top executive at the Chicago-based law firm Baker & McKenzie, is considered a veteran political negotiator who speaks her mind, even when it has put her at odds with her boss, France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy. She has nurtured a close personal relationship with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, leading the two women to find common ground on several important policy decisions as the euro crisis unfurled....
That's why the Germans backed down on the bankers-must-take-loss talk.
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