The International Monetary Fund, the guardian of global financial stability, will soon select its next director. Unhappily, and true to form, it is proceeding in secret, with little opportunity for the public to appraise the leading candidates or their views on critical questions about the future of the fund. The lack of openness is intolerable for one of the world's most influential organizations. The fund's primary mission is to stamp out currency crises like those that struck Korea, Thailand and Russia in recent years. In exchange for a bailout, the fund extracts commitments by beleaguered countries to change their monetary, fiscal, banking and other economic policies to the liking of the fund.
Critics accuse the fund of overreaching.
It intervenes in dozens of countries, only some of which are in immediate financial turmoil, to fight poverty or to help shift their economies from socialism to capitalism. The fund's mixed record of success has led powerful members of Congress to ask whether the fund should leave issues of poverty and development to the World Bank. There are also important questions about whether the fund should bail out fewer countries, pour less money into bankrupt nations, impose less onerous conditions on its loans or lift the debt of poverty-stricken societies. The next director will face these and many other difficult issues. Yet not one of the three top candidates has adequately described in public how he would handle them or made clear whether he would try to lead the fund in new directions.