I and my wife have watched the new appointee Christine Lagarde on TV dealing with the EU debt and another problems several times she is great performer. So good in fact to ignore Sauls Eslakes sensible arguments.

The IMF has no useful purpose.It is an institution of repression just like the World Bank,Bank of International Settlements and the US Federal Reserve.

Just 18 mths ago the IMF bragged about creating $1 trillion US from nothing and bailing out various institutions around the planet.How many trillions have they created since then?They are counterfeiting our currencies to expand their own wealth.They create money from nothing as debt and keep the masses in poverty.

The rumours are,the head of the IMF,Strauss Kahn, had to go because he was beginning to develop and conscience.

I fail to see why the author thinks this kind of elitist plugging for a mate has any relevance to us (most of us) ordinary mortals at OLO; or that we should care about or understand the counting bead game the neoliberal Castalians treat like the I Ching--as substitute for wealth and poverty, happiness and misery, life and death---most of us are still subject to these as actual realities.
I don't care how mainstream their pathetic world view is, with its futures fascinations and its faux humanitarianism; I despise all the fat cats and their fiscal "wisdom". I hope the debtor-nations break the IMF bank. The whole things just a piss-up on Grange to them; a house of cards that's getting ever-precariously higher. I say roll out the guillotine!

Saul, I think its just a question of time now. As economic might
moves to Asia, the Europeans and Americans will have to accept
reality as it is.

* I say roll out the guillotine!*

Ah Squeers, how easy it is to live the chardonay socialist lifestyle!

You don't live in a slum, you have all the benefits of the Australian
free enterprise system, you can live it up and pass smart arsed
comments as you sip your wine. All very easy really.

Yabby ,you don't know the meaning of socialist.The biggest socialist parasite on the planet is the central banking industry.They produce nothing and own almost everything.

Arjay,

The IMF has a purpose. It is the employment of graduates from schools of economics of which Paul Eslake is a specimen.