Top 72 IMF Quotes & Sayings

Rather than waiting for a crisis to erupt before intervening, the IMF should provide 'forward guidance' on how it will tackle potential disruptions in international financial markets.

I don't know how many resolutions from the IMF or G-20 we have already written saying that such [financial] reforms are necessary for new growth.

I do wish that the IMF and the World Bank would disappear soon.

By promising to intervene in vulnerable markets in the event of excessive financial volatility, the IMF, as the largest player, would reduce coordination problems among investors.

Why is it so hard for the IMF and the U.S. government to understand that putting out the fire comes before fireproofing the building?

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

If the IMF is correct (a big if), China will be the planet's No.1 economy by 2016. That means whoever's elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world's dominant economic power.

Wealth does not trickle down to the poor. Oxfam knows this, the IMF knows this, the World Bank knows this. Poor people have always known this.

We're in a chronic debt-deflation. There's no way we can recover unless you write down the debts. And that's what the IMF basically is implying (and it was explicit regarding Greece), but its not spelling it out, because that's not what can be said in polite company.

The IMF is set up to deal with liquidity crises.

We simply cannot afford any further delay in providing the IMF with the resources it requires to help contain the threat of further financial and political instability around the world.

I found myself doing extraordinary things that arent in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. The whole world is now practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.

Some of the policy measures that are important are politically difficult if taken independent of actions by others in support of common goals. Joint actions are therefore needed, and establishing a G-11 with an effective role for the IMF provides the viable way forward.

The Hungarian interest is that, if necessary, we should make loan agreements with the IMF on a regular basis.

The IMF economists were doubtless shaken by the extreme failures of their prescriptions over many years, and by the collapse of the intellectual edifice of economic theory on which they were relying.

We're at the end of long cycle that began in 1945, loading the economy with debt. We're not going to be able to get out of it until you write down the debts. But that's what the IMF believes is unthinkable. It can't say that, because it's supposed to represent the interest of the banks.

We must work to repeal trade agreements that impede access to affordable generic drugs. We must work to cause the IMF and the World Bank to reduce and eventually eliminate the debt that takes poor nations' resources away from crises like AIDS. We must focus America's leadership on addressing and ending this epidemic.

The good thing about the IMF is there is no European politics involved.

We do have some assistance from the World Bank but not from the IMF. We are not borrowing yet, but we are considering, in the future, borrowing from the Kuwait Fund to support our infrastructure development.

One by one, these governments came undone, and were forced into IMF tutelage (and national illegitimacy) by the careening oil prices, the debt imbroglio, and falling terms of trade. The last of these governments to fall were the Communist regimes of eastern Europe, which have now gone the way of other Third World countries. The second in the cascade of bifurcations is thus symbolized by 1989.

No one wants a default, or to slam the door in the IMF's face.

China's accumulation of reserves is a result of the IMF's mismanagement of the Asian financial crisis a decade or so ago. If countries know they can't rely on the IMF to help them, their best defense is their own reserve cushion. In a time of spreading global recession, too much emphasis on savings in surplus countries like China can impede prospects for global growth.

The IMF acts on the mandate of the international community.

We interpret our agreement with the IMF - our participation in the IMF's system of cooperation - as a borrowing agreement. The IMF sees it as an economic policy agreement. This is not in our interest.

It is not in our interest to sign economic policy agreements with the IMF, as that unnecessarily limits the room to manoeuvre of... the Hungarian government, Hungarian parliament and lawmakers.

We have not argued in either Brazil or Argentina that the IMF should step in to protect the banks.

Korea's early repayment of the full amount of loans from the IMF is a major milestone.

With all that IMF money, the Thailand's and Mexico's are spared the consequences of their fiscal incompetence, and Wall Street's heavy hitters are spared the consequences of their stupid investments. The global economy is a rigged game, rigged so Third World politicians, rich investors and global corporations win - and U.S. taxpayers lose.

We have fulfilled all our agreements and all the conditions set by the IMF better than any other state.

Every government, from the Obama administration right through to Angela Merkel, the Eurozone and the IMF, promise to save the banks, not the economy.

The risk of policy contagion could be magnified if a new funding arrangement were agreed between Argentina and the IMF before a comprehensive policy framework is developed that addresses fundamental investor concerns.

The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.

The Muslim leaders swallow the advice of the Western powers and bodies like the IMF and World Bank, even when it is bad for their countries and they know this.

Too many politicians seem to reach for 'infrastructure' as the default answer to investment, as if roads and bridges were the answer to everything. Even the IMF and the World Bank seem to mainly offer infrastructure spending as an alternative to austerity, although they are right to focus on the need for investment.

The IMF played crucial roles in the 1980s debt crisis and in the transformation of former communist economies. Radical change, many might argue, is neither necessary nor desirable.

International institutions like the Security Council, the General Assembly, the G20, the BRICs, the IMF, etc., continue to be little more than an extension of the (increasingly conflicting) values and interests of member states.

Debtor countries may postpone the inevitable by borrowing from the IMF or U.S. Treasury to buy out bondholders. This saves the latter from taking a loss - leaving the debtor country with debts that are even harder to annul, because they are to foreign governments and international institutions.

When the dollar was separated entirely from gold in 1971, it ceased being the official IMF world currency and finally had to compete with other currencies... From that point forward, its value increasingly became discounted.

If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America.

The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven.

The IMF and the World Bank, the most opaque and secretive entities, put millions into NGOs who fight against "corruption" and for "transparency." They want the Rule of Law - as long as they make the laws. They want transparency in order to standardise a situation, so that global capital can flow without any impediment.

It seems evident that the IMF has learned nothing from its inequality-inducing policies during the 1980s debt crises in Latin America nor from its recession-deepening response to the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s. In both regions, the IMF has become synonymous with making bad situations worse.

But such IMF pressure is very much helpful for me to push such a, you know, reform. So in this sense I think IMF is very much helpful for alien society.

The United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

The IMF acts as the collection agent for global bondholders. Its projections begin by assuming that all debts can be paid, if economies will cut wages and wiping out pension funds so as to pay banks and bondholders.

There were times when there were riots in Africa, demonstrations against the IMF because of the policy advice they were giving, the conditionalities they were imposing, and the difficulties that arose out of the implementation of those conditionalities.

I have full confidence in the IMF. It is a very strong international institution.

Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries.

Americans are gathering the courage to just say no. We are saying no to addictive consumer lifestyles. We are saying no to wars and corporate takeover and the IMF loans that gobble up people and their resources.

Japan is the largest creditor country in the world, so we have made contributions to the stability of international markets and we want this IMF meeting to confirm that we will continue to contribute.

Paul Krugman, a professor at MIT and a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Trilateral Commission, is certainly a member of the establishment.

Trade is the key to the economic outlook in Britain and the E.U. Many corporate chieftains joined large bank CEOs and the fearmongering IMF to suggest that the E.U. will deal harshly with Britain if it leaves and stop all trade. That's mutually assured destruction - MAD.

The IMF is a more complicated issue. I think there is a broad sentiment among both the left and the right that the IMF may be doing more harm than good. On the right, there's the view that it represents a form of corporate welfare that is counter to the IMF's own ideology of markets. But anybody who has watched government from the inside recognizes that governments need institutions, need ways to respond to crises. If the IMF weren't there, it would probably be reinvented. So the issue is fundamentally reform.

The IMF is the International Mafia Federation. They're the loansharks of last resort.

It was very important for us to hear that both European governments and the IMF are going to sustain and augment their commitment to Greece because they don't pursue the debt reduction route. They're actually extending more debt, more loans to Greece.

The IMF and other multilateral institutions do not appear to have prevented nations from manipulating the value of their own currencies.

By the way, the European Union Member States together - even the euro area Member States together - are by far the biggest contributors to the IMF.