A lame duck managing director would hamstring the Fund.

This undermines the IMF s relevance and is at the root of the early repayments that have left the Fund with almost no income.

Instead, most IMF shareholders seem to favor making the organization s financing easier.

Many emerging markets preferred to self insure by accumulating reserves rather than borrow from the Fund.

Fourth, the IMF s governing body endorsed the G 20 proposal for the Fund to help with their peer review.

Third, the obvious secretariat is the IMF. Unfortunately, the Fund is not regarded as being impartial, especially by countries that have been seared by its past conditionality.

The IMF owns a lot of gold more than 100 million ounces and it is on the books at historical cost.

The IMF has long been a whipping boy for both left and right the former because of the Fund s emphasis on fiscal rectitude and economic orthodoxy, and the latter because of its role in bailing out indebted nations. Developing nations grudgingly took its advice, while advanced nations, not needing the money, ignored it.

Establishing a green fund would be an implicit pledge to do so by putting the gold reserves of the IMF at risk.

Cash from closed missions is also a source of funding for new or expanded missions, in addition to the Peacekeeping Reserve Fund.

The perception that advanced countries are running business in the Fund, but do not adhere to Fund advice, has undermined the IMF s authority.

If you ask Asian leaders what would make them consider again approaching the Fund after their traumatic experience with IMF assistance in 1997 1998, they will answer an Asian managing director.

The IMF was given a privileged legal position, and only devastated and wrecked failed states such as Sudan would default on loans from the Fund.

The IMF s crisis prevention efforts begin with its country surveillance, as provided for by Article IV of its Articles of Agreement.

The IMF s resources were extended in 2009, and the organization was supposed to be reformed in order to give emerging markets more voice.

CHICAGO Now that the dust has settled over the selection of the International Monetary Fund s managing director, the IMF can return to its core business of managing crises.

For example, on monetary affairs, the Bretton Woods conference created the International Monetary Fund in 1944, and it has since expanded to include 186 countries.

It is the turn of someone from outside Europe to head the IMF Europe having had a monopoly on the position since the Fund was created following World War II.

All of this is needed to enable the Fund to support the global coordination functions for which it is uniquely well equipped.

For this, it drew a stern reproach from Germany s Bundesbank a clear sign that it is doing something right.

Finally, the new IMF needs governance structures that better reflect today s new global realities. The perception that advanced countries are running business in the Fund, but do not adhere to Fund advice, has undermined the IMF s authority.

WASHINGTON, DC One of the IMF s main purposes is to give confidence to members by making its general resources temporarily available to them.

To be fair, the IMF s leadership is making a determined effort to give dynamic emerging economies, particularly in Asia, a bigger say in Fund governance.

The IMF s first two managing directors, the Belgian Camille Gutt and the Swede Ivar Rooth, were both weak figures. Indeed, the Fund almost disappeared into complete oblivion during their tenure.

The convention that the IMF s managing director needs to be a West European is not written down anywhere, least of all in the Fund s Articles of Agreement.

For example, the IMF s authority has suffered in the recent decade especially in Asia from the fund s deep commitment to neo liberal orthodoxy and the so called Washington Consensus.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss Kahn declared the move historic and the most important decision on the Fund s governance since its establishment in 1944.

It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.

The IMF focuses on crisis prevention, and in the past decade encouraged greater transparency and stronger financial systems.

The IMF is the only candidate for this task, but experience has shown that the Fund can fulfill this role only if its governance is reformed.

We can expect to hear all kinds of misleading excuses from EU sources for excluding the IMF the Fund is too American, Europe must resolve its own problems, and the IMF is not appropriate to our circumstances.

This should be understood as the first step toward integrating general resource and SDR accounts into a single IMF account, and to increase the SDR s role in IMF transactions so that it eventually becomes the main or even only mechanism for IMF financing.

The IMF adopted the agenda wholeheartedly, and its leadership sought (unsuccessfully) to amend the Articles of Agreement to give the Fund formal powers over capital account policies in its member states.

The Fund normally expects that problems come from the usual suspects economically volatile developing countries but this time the crisis was developing a few miles away from its headquarters. Perhaps this proximity was at the root of the IMF s failure to interpret the evidence right under its nose.

Many of the governance reforms proposed for the IMF and the World Bank affecting, most obviously, how their heads are chosen finally seem to be on the table.

And the G 20 unexpectedly agreed to triple the IMF s resources and bring its reserve currency, special drawing rights (SDRs), back from the dead.

Moreover, an IMF stigma remains among those countries in the region that were discontented with the Fund s role during the 1997 1998 Asian financial crisis.

IMF reform is sensible and should be supported. The Europeans do not need their current level of representation, and the positions and voices of middle and lower income countries should be strengthened.

Not only do they feel less market discipline, but they are subject to less IMF discipline, since they are not compelled to borrow from the Fund.

NEW YORK The annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund was notable in marking the Fund s effort to distance itself from its own long standing tenets on capital controls and labor market flexibility.

The IMF and World Bank would offer advice, expertise, and financing, with the Fund concentrating on the macroeconomic and financial stability that is crucial to fostering durable growth and poverty reduction.

Early warnings, commissioned by the G20, should be specific and the IMF should monitor whether policymakers give follow up to the Fund s advice.

The IMF has moved in this direction by creating a Short Term Liquidity Facility through which countries with strong policies can draw from the Fund up to five times their quota without conditionality.

The IMF s resources were extended in 2009, and the organization was supposed to be reformed in order to give emerging markets more voice. But little progress has been made.

First, the green fund could be self financing or even profitable very little of the IMF s gold, if any, would actually be used.