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IMF chief's arrest means organisation now risks being rudderless as it enters delicate talks on a new loan package for Greece
With the global economy still fragile after the worst downturn since the 1930s and Europe gripped by a debt crisis, the scandal involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn could hardly have come at a worse time for the International Monetary Fund.
The organisation now risks being left rudderless as delicate negotiations take place on the terms of a new loan package to Greece and as the fund seeks agreement on policies to prevent a relapse into recession.
It also looks inevitable that there will be a power struggle to fill the vacuum at the fund, with the developing world insisting that the time has come to end the carve up between the Europeans and the Americans of the top jobs at the IMF and its sister organisation, the World Bank.
Traditionally, Washington has nominated the president of the bank while the Europeans have been left to decide who should run the fund. Strauss-Kahn is the fourth Frenchman to hold the role since the organisation was established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.
The choice of a new leader will be crucial. There are plenty of distinguished economists from developing countries with experience of running central banks and finance ministries, most of them with PhDs from the top American universities.
But it is possible that the Europeans and Americans – who dominate decision-making at the fund – will insist on a safe, orthodox choice if they are to end their gentleman's agreement stretching back more than 75 years.
The Germans, for example, would probably prefer one of the many developing country economists who have degrees from the University of Chicago, and who can be relied upon to champion balanced budgets. The Republicans on Capitol Hill will be looking for a candidate who believes in free markets and small states.
So while Strauss-Kahn moved the fund in a more progressive direction, there is no guarantee that this approach will continue under a new leader. The former French finance minister identified the crucial failings of the Washington-based organisation and set about rectifying them.
When he arrived in the autumn of 2007, the fund suffered from three big problems: it had been ideologically wedded to the free-market philosophy of financial liberalisation that caused the world's banking system to implode, it had suffered from weak leadership and it was short of money.
Strauss-Kahn admitted that the fund's failure to spot the crisis coming in the period before his arrival had been caused by "group think". He highlighted the need to focus on employment and accepted that countries facing speculative pressure were justified in using capital controls to defend themselves, an anathema during the high pomp of neo-liberalism, dubbed the Washington consensus.
The fund's coffers were also replenished, in part due to the funding organised by Gordon Brown at the London G20 summit in April 2009 and in part by the sale of the IMF's gold reserves.
Even so, Strauss-Kahn's revamp of the IMF has been partial and is still very much a work in progress. The traditional tough conditions have been imposed on Greece and Ireland in exchange for financial help from the fund, the stranglehold of the big developed nations on decision making remains despite some modest changes to governance that give developing countries more of a say and it is questionable whether the willingness to intervene to smooth out the global imbalances between creditor and debtor nations is more than skin deep.
Changes to the rules mean that the next MD of the fund should be chosen by an open and transparent process. However, the same rule was in force when Strauss-Kahn was appointed. Were a prominent European candidate with the right credentials be put forward they would still have a good chance of securing the job, given the voting structure of the fund's board.
In theory, Brown would be the obvious European choice to continue Strauss-Kahn's work. Brown chaired the IMF's key policy committee for almost a decade when he was chancellor and believes the fund should actively intervene to tackle poverty and make the global economy less unstable. Despite the post being handed around European countries on a "buggin's turn" basis since the second world war, a Briton has never run the IMF.
To get the job, however, Brown would need the support of David Cameron, something the prime minister has said publicly will not be given. The chances, therefore, are that the fund's next boss will be from the developing world, with the betting on someone considered to be a safe pair of hands.