Econintersect: Chistine Lagarde, the newly elected head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), hinted Tuesday (July 26) that more money may be needed by her organization. Lagarde made the remarks while addressing a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. According to Dow Jones Newswires, an IMF spokesman said later that Lagarde was partly underscoring the need for members to deliver on their agreed increase in quotas.From The Wall Street Journal:
After increasing the quota contributions — dues required from members to fund the IMF’s lending programs — and activating a major new pool of bilateral loans, the IMF has a total resource base near $1.5 trillion. However, given existing loans and the fact members haven’t yet coughed up all the promised cash, the IMF says only around $396 billion of that is available to lend in the next year. A sizable chunk of that will likely be used to finance a new loan for Greece in coming weeks.
The IMF is considered by many to be lacking the resources to deal with debt blow-ups in the rest of the PIIGS that have not yet received bailouts: Portugal, Italy and Spain.
Sources: Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal
