Re: Rogoff contra Stiglitz

["Gunnar Tomasson" <gunnar.tomasson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re. the following:

>      I wanted to bring to your all's attention the
> brouhaha that has erupted between Ken Rogoff, Chief
> Economist of the IMF, and Joe Stiglitz.

Here is my message of today's date to Gang8 on related issues:

The IMF does what member governments instruct it to do on (a) a continuing
basis through the IMF's Executive Board, (b) a half-yearly basis through a
special Ministerial Committee, and (c) a yearly basis through the IMF's
Board of Governors comprising some 180 Ministers of Finance and Central Bank
Governors.

And therein lies the rub - for the instructions which issue forth through
(a), (b) and (c) reflect domestic political priorities dressed up in the
technical jargon of  mainstream and monetarist orthodoxy by
Nobel-Prize-winning economic scholars.   The IMF is the Messenger that
brings the resulting News.

When the News is bad, moral courage at the tail end of the
Academic-Political-IMF chain is no substitute for (a) intellectual
integrity, and (b) political courage up front.  Absent (a) and (b), it is a
foregone conclusion that compelling circumstance alone can force change at
the level of world monetary arrangements and the IMF.

Gunnar



----- Original Message -----
From: <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 1:03 PM
Subject: Rogoff contra Stiglitz