The IMF and global exchange rates: dissensus in Washington

In many scholarly and activist circles, the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or ‘the Fund’) has a reputation as a global bully. The phrase ‘Washington consensus’ has come to invoke a rigid orthodoxy of austerity and liberalization which the Fund, along with its cousins the World Bank and the US Treasury, imposes on developing countries. As an organization, the IMF is seemingly monolithic, drawing comparison to the Vatican even amongst its own staff.

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Tod S. Van Gunten is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. His recent article in Socio-Economic Review, is “Washington dissensus: ambiguity and conflict at the International Monetary Fund”