USA: Former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the new chief of the International Monetary Fund

Continuing a six-decade tradition of a European leading the global financial institution, a former French finance minister is the new chief of the International Monetary Fund. France, famously ill-at-ease with globalisation, confirmed its position as top supplier of manpower to the world's economic agencies when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was named next head of the International Monetary Fund on Friday (September 28). His nomination puts a Frenchman back at the helm at the IMF, alongside Pascal Lamy at the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation, Jean-Claude Trichet at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and Jean Lemierre at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. Succeeding Spaniard Rodrigo Rato may not be the job everyone dreams of, given that up-and-coming economies no longer need so much IMF aid and efforts to give the Washington-based lender a new role in global economic management are going nowhere fast. Yet few could doubt Paris's determination to put a Frenchman back in a job France has occupied for half of the life of the IMF, set up, along with the World Bank, after World War Two. Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist former finance minister once seen as presidential material, was proposed for the job by a man who comes from the opposite side of the political divide, President Nicolas Sarkozy. Odd as it may look, that continues a grand French tradition where political colour takes a back seat when it comes to the strategic international posts. Strauss-Kahn, 58, takes over in October from Rato, who is leaving early, as did his German predecessor, Horst Koehler. Before Koehler got the job in 2000, the IMF was run for 13 years by Michel Camdessus, a Frenchman, and before for almost a decade by Jacques de Larosiere, a Frenchman too. And another Frenchman, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, ran it from 1963 to 1973. Strauss-Kahn may be the last Frenchman to head the IMF, and even the last European, as the rest of the organisation's 185 member countries demand an end to a carveup that puts the top World Bank job in U.S. hands and the IMF one with Europe.

ITN Source | September 29, 2007

Tags:. .agencies. .position. .september. .everyone. .role