A top economist at the International Monetary Fund has poured scorn on its “tainted” leadership and said he is “ashamed” to have worked there.
Peter Doyle:
“After twenty years of service, I am ashamed to have had any association with with the Fund at all.”
Peter Doyle said in a letter to the IMF executive board that he wanted to explain his resignation after 20 years.
He writes of “incompetence”, “failings” and “disastrous” appointments for the IMF’s managing director, stretching back 10 years.
No one from the Washington-based IMF was immediately available for comment.
Mr Doyle, former adviser to the IMF’s European Department, which is running the bailout programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, said the Fund’s delay in warning about the urgency of the global financial crisis was a failure of the “first order”.
In the letter, dated 18 June and obtained by the US broadcaster CNN, Mr Doyle said the failings of IMF surveillance of the financial crisis “are, if anything, becoming more deeply entrenched”.
He writes: “This fact is most clear in regard to appointments for managing director which, over the past decade, have all-too-evidently been disastrous.
“Even the current incumbent [Christine Lagarde] is tainted, as neither her gender, integrity, or elan can make up for the fundamental illegitimacy of the selection process.”
Mr Doyle is thought to be echoing here widespread criticism that the head of the IMF is always a European, while the World Bank chief is always a US appointee.
Mr Doyle concludes his letter: “There are good salty people here. But this one is moving on. You might want to take care not to lose the others.”
The IMF could not be reached immediately by the BBC. However, CNN reported that a Fund spokesman told it that there was nothing to substantiate Mr Doyle’s claims and that the IMF had held its own investigations into surveillance of the financial crisis. (BBC)
Doyle’s Letter you will find Here
PS I assume millions of bailouted citizens around the world will applaud Peter Doyle 🙂
Why is the letter dated 18th June?
becuase it was then when he resigned but yesterday the letter was leaked to the press (CNN)
The more interesting question is: Why did it take him 20 years to write that letter?
he was tring to switch from typewriter to pc
Hehe!
😀
Hard on the heels of this letter comes this press release from Mme Lagarde
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12262.htm
Strenghtening IMf surveillance or a case of “I spy with my little eye…” Where can my neo-leberal friends make the next financial killing and how can we assist them in doing so would be a good deal closer to the truth.
A question. Who did, and when did they ever vote for the IMF to become the legal guardian of this and other countries? Who exactly gave them the mandate they claim to have? Somehow, they have managed to get their dirty little fingers into every national economy and started imposing their neo-liberal economic clap trap serving the rich at the expense of the poor.
I guess the IMF-members decided so. Kind of “transfering” economic powers of the states to IMF due to lazy & incapable politicians?
and brown envelopes?
“Even the current incumbent [Christine Lagarde] is tainted, as neither her gender, integrity, or elan can make up for the fundamental illegitimacy of the selection process.”
—
Hmm, not much different from the EU then (think e.g. Rompuy & Co).
Indeed, self appointed, no accountability, no controls, and they don’t even pay taxes!
Reading through the letter again, I find the choice of words rather interesting. Peter Doyle states:
“Moreso, it is because the substantive difficulties in these crisis, as with others, were identified well in advance but were supressed here.”
that one 1 sentence implies that
– this is not the first time this happens (as with others)
– he specifically uses the word “supressed”, meaning
Supressing knowledge is a pre-meditated, deliberate action in order to prevent certain knowledge from becoming public knowledge. So who was (is?) the IMF protecting, and why?
When something is being supressed, that usually also implies that something else is happening or will happen which would be derailed if the supressed knowledge because public. Is he implying that the IMF (together with others?)planned what is happening now? “The consequenses suffering for many including Greece..” It would seem that this suffering was planned…
Mr Doyle is making serious accusations here, and it would be good if he came out and explained in detail what exactly he knows and implies.
“A top economist at the International Monetary Fund”
Top? Apparently, he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia entry. At least he seems to be a “salty” economist, that means, not a deciple of radical monetarism, but otherwise, we don’t know anything definitive about his allegedly better ideas for solving the Eurocrisis. He may be even worse than Lagarde, that’s entirely possible. Two facts should be reason for concern: Firstly, he complain about the IMF being too European, in his opinion. D’oh, as if the US have contributed anything positive to the global economy in the last three decades! And secondly, he worked for the IMF for TWENTY YEARS. During that time, that institution has screwed up one bailout after another, they don’t have any success story to show at all. But it took Doyle’s conscience 20 years to reach the point where it said “no more”. Well, that’s not really impressive, imho. Looks more like he’s pissed off because his carreer stagnated, or because of not getting along with Lagarde, than that he suffered under long term ethical conflicts.
TWENTY YEARS, my ass! If he’s honest, he should have quit 18 years ago.
He may not have a wikipedia page, but he was no lightweight either. Peter Doyle was the IMF divison head for Israel, Sweden and Denmark and one of the advisors to the IMF’s European Department running the bailout programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
So what made him throw the toys out of the pram after 20 years? We’ll probably never know. Disgruntled employees can turn on their employers in no time, and there are many, many reasons why people can end up disgruntled..
The real question is why did Lagarde find it necessary to immediately issue a Press release . No smoke without fire…
So there must be something about what he has to say to trigger that reaction. Usually, if an organisation like the IMf feels snuggly secure in their position, revelations like this are met with aloof silence, or at best, a put down translating into “Lier” or something nice like that.
Revelations like this are not met with press releases from the boss woman basically confirming that the accusations have at least some ring of truth in them.
As I already said, the language used by Peter Doyle would seriously suggest the accusations point to repeatedly deliberate actions by the IMF. And you have to ask, why, and on who’s behalf?