Overview of the IMF
Origin, Organization, and Functions
Except to a small circle of economists and financial officials, the International Monetary Fund is a mysterious presence on the international scene. Considerable confusion reigns about why it exists and what it does. Some are under the impression that the IMF exists to subsidize economic development in the poorer nations. Others imagine it as an international central bank controlling the creation of money on a world scale. Still others regard the IMF as a powerful and disapproving political institution, imbued with a missionary zeal for fiscal rectitude, that somehow compels its members to tread a path of economic austerity. The…
