The global financial crisis triggered by widespread speculative lending and investment in major international financial centres poses two sets of policy challenges. First, it calls for an immediate policy response in order to stabilize financial markets and international capital flows, halt economic decline and initiate recovery. So far major industrial countries have taken a range of measures for these purposes, including bailout operations through infusion of capital into weakened financial institutions and industrial firms and government guarantees for impaired financial assets and bank deposits; significant easing of monetary conditions and speedy and sharp reductions in interest rates; and large fiscal stimulus packages. Developing and emerging economies (DEEs) have also adopted measures to ease credit conditions and stimulate private spending to counter destabilizing and deflationary impulses from the crisis. However, several of them face resource constraints in responding to the crisis with countercyclical policies. There is a strong rationale and some scope for using trade and financial policies to ease the resource constraint. But, in many cases effective policy response depends crucially on the provision of adequate international liquidity at appropriate terms and conditions through multilateral financial institutions.
Secondly, this crisis has indicated once again the need for a fundamental reform of the international financial system in order to secure greater stability and prevent virulent crises with global ramifications. A consensus appears to have emerged among the major players in the world economy on the need for reform and a number of ad hoc initiatives have been launched and proposals put forward in various fora including the United Nations, the Group of 20 and the Bretton Woods Institutions. But to what extent these will result in the kind of changes needed is highly uncertain. The past record in this respect is not very encouraging. Despite a wide agreement on a systemic reform to bring about more effective governance to international finance after a series of crises in emerging economies in the 1990s and proliferation of proposals for reform, the Financing for Development initiative launched has yielded no significant outcome in this respect in the past seven years. DEEs have a considerably greater stake in such a reform in view of disproportionately large damage that international financial instability inflicts on them. It is therefore important that they lead the process and form a coherent view for real change in a broad range of areas of crucial interest to them, including the mandate, resources, operational modalities and governance of the IMF, so as to reduce their vulnerability to financial instability and crises while preserving adequate policy autonomy in managing their integration into the international financial system, and capital flows and exchange rates.
These two sets of issues overlap in certain respects. In particular many of the shortcomings in the immediate policy response to the crisis by the international community have their roots in the deficiencies in global institutional arrangements for crisis management and resolution. The next section will discuss the constraints DEEs are facing in responding to deflationary and destabilizing impulses from the crisis, making an assessment of the international initiatives undertaken so far to provide support. This is followed by a discussion of the reform of the international financial architecture under two headings; crisis prevention and crisis intervention and resolution. Discussions will focus on issues that are viewed as of particular importance for stability and growth in DEEs, rather than on every issue raised by the current crisis. The final section will give a summary of the policy proposals advanced in the paper.
Contents
A. Introduction
B. Policy response in DEEs: Payments constraint and international support
1. Crisis impact and domestic policy options
2. International liquidity support
C. Reform of the international financial architecture
1. Areas of reform for crisis prevention
- a. Multilateral policy discipline in money and finance
b. A stable international reserves system
c. Regulation of international financial markets and capital flows
2. Crisis intervention and resolution
D. Summary of policy conclusions and proposals
1. Immediate policy response
2. Crisis prevention: Multilateral policy surveillance
3. Crisis prevention: International reserves system
4. Crisis prevention: Regulation of international financial markets
5. Crisis intervention and resolution
6. Further areas of reform of the IMF
References
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