Geopolitics and IMF

When the IMF originally planned its annual meeting for late September in Washington, the top item on the agenda might have been called "back to basics." Fund officials recognized that their institution had become vastly overextended. Founded in 1944 to resolve balance-of-payments crises that threaten the global financial system, the fund has instead evolved into a mega-bureaucracy that tries to micromanage everything from trade policies to social programs in dozens of developing nations. Thus, the IMF has become a lightning rod for both the right and the left. And it has gained a reputation for spending too much time pushing U.S. policy agendas.

Ripples have been felt in all corners of the world by the decisions made by IMF. It still functions as a industrialized nations bank, with all the controls and authority in the hands of a small select group of countries that still try to hold on to their past laurels.