Bob Russell

This letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, written in response to the preceding selection, "The IMF Wrinkle," appeared on 16 April 1998. Bob Russell is an adviser to the fund's External Relations Department.

How can we IMF staffers have a "wrinkle" ("The IMF Wrinkle," Review & Outlook, 10 April 1998) if we're "faceless bureaucrats" (see almost any previous WSJ editorial)? Obviously your editorialists continue to grasp at straws in a vain effort to persuade the public that IMF policy prescriptions are invented by wayward, ignorant, and coddled staff members. How else could they fail to prescribe tax cuts anywhere and everywhere all the time without regard to yawning budget deficits? How else to explain their occasional support for currency devaluations (presumably in lieu of deflation, exchange controls, and unlimited lender of last resort bailouts of currency traders)?

But truth be told, staff views don't matter very much. What you seem to have difficulty accepting is that the country representatives on the IMF board--where the United States and other hard currency countries wield the most votes--call the tune. They, not anonymous staff, decide which tax policy and exchange-rate recommendations are preferable. So long as most national leaders and their IMF directors do not share fully Robert Bartley's [editor of the Wall Street Journal] confessional, it's hardly fair to blame IMF staff.

But there must also be a reason why you pretend to believe the proposed IMF quota increase is the personal project of IMF managing director Camdessus rather than the consensus of 182 national governments. Probably it's just too hard to face up to the necessity for backing serious international monetary cooperation with serious lines of credit, just in case global markets don't always work right. That's enough to furrow the editorial brow, indeed.