Jockeying Begins for IMF Position

Is there some kind of rule which says that high-profile international technocrats have to be French? Sometimes it seems so:

France has had its fair share of IMF heads as Frenchmen have led the institution for more than 30 of its 61 years of existence, and also have Jean-Claude Trichet in charge of the European Central Bank, Pascal Lamy at the World Trade Organization and Jean Lemierre at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The story here is that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former French finance minister, is already heir apparent to Rodrigo Rato as managing director of the IMF. One point in his favor: he's utterly failed to become president of France, so he's not going to pull a Horst Köhler and quit to become president of his own country. French president Nicolas Sarkozy has already started working the phones for Strauss-Kahn, long before any other country has even so much as come up with a candidate of its own. As the WSJ drily puts it, "France nearly always has a stable of candidates for these international posts."

The Bank of England's Mervyn King seems to have dropped out of the running, perhaps because UK finance minister Alistair Darling has decided to take the high road and say that the job should go to the most qualified candidate, regardless of nationality. As if. Darling's sentiment is noble, to be sure, but with the US already having said that it will support Europe's candidate, the final outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Of course, there are many more countries which count as European these days than did in 1946 when Belgium's Camille Gutt became the Fund's first MD. Which means that the next leader of the IMF could be a European and come from a developing country: Poland's Leszek Balcerowicz, for instance, is on the BBC's list of possible names.

Officially, the IMF is accepting nominations from any country, just like it did three years ago, when Egypt nominated Mohamed El-Erian. And it's quite likely that this time around the non-European candidate will get more votes than El-Erian did last time, if there's a strong candidate put forward. A non-European leading the IMF is a bit like gay marriage: everybody knows it's inevitable sooner or later, but it does seem to take an eternity before we get there. Maybe what's needed is someone who already has a job running an international institution, ideally in France. Angel Gurría would be an excellent choice, I think – the former Mexican finance minister is now secretary-general of the OECD, in Paris. He also, according to Wikipedia, "speaks eleven languages including: Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Italian and German." That's gotta help, no?

In the meantime, the world could do worse than Strauss-Kahn. He's qualified for the job, he's broadly respected, and he fits right in to a tradition of bold-face French technocrats including Jacques de Larosière and Michel Camdessus. And from Sarkozy's point of view, of course, his appointment would also have the added bonus of meaning that one of his key political opponents would be shipped off to Washington where he could do very little harm.

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