Speculating on the IMF Succession

I'm surprised at the relatively subdued reaction to the news that IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato is stepping down in October. Given that his resignation was such a surprise, one might expect a flurry of speculation as to the reasons why he's going and the identity of his successor. But so far, there's been very little.

Naturally, global governance types are hoping that a non-European will get a look in. Dani Rodrik says his candidate would be Arminio Fraga, and I'm sure that the Egyptians are sounding out Mohamed El-Erian to see if he might be interested in reprising his quixotic 2004 run for the job.

But with Robert Zoellick having received zero push-back in his quest to lead the World Bank, the chances of any non-European having any realistic hope of getting the job remain, effectively, zero. The favorite at the moment would seem to be Mervyn King, of the Bank of England – a strong central banker and someone I can't see generating any real opposition.

Who else is there? Reuters reports that Mario Draghi, of the Bank of Italy, has ruled himself out. Jean Lemierre of the EBRD and Christian Noyer of the Bank of France have both been mentioned, but I don't see either of them getting the job, if only because a Frenchman has run the IMF for 13 of the past 20 years. And that would seem to leave Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi of the ECB, who lacks management experience.

There might be others: it would certainly be nice to be able to choose from a slightly deeper pool than a few European central bank governors. I wonder if Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann might be interested?