The Chastening ─ Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the Imf

In The Chastening, Paul Blustein examines the role of the International Monetary Fund in the series of economic crises that hit Asia, Russia, and Latin America in the late 1990s and continue to reverberate today. His behind-the-scenes look dispels the illusion that the IMF and its overseers in Washington are economic masterminds coolly dispensing effective remedies. The reality is that as markets were sinking and defaults looming, the guardians of global financial stability were often scrambling, floundering, improvising, feuding among themselves, and striking messy compromises. Blustein shows that the IMF is woefully ill-equipped to combat the new strains of investor panics plaguing national economies in the era of globalization.