New IMF head

Fund needs to better reflect global economic changes

The International Monetary Fund will elect a new chief in a month. The viewpoints of Asian countries, and many other non-European member nations for that matter, seem to be as cynical as can be. They think it little more than a perfunctory rite to enthrone French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde.
These non-Western emerging countries have plenty of reasons. Another European, let alone French, IMF chief to restore financial order messed up by many European countries' fiscal slovenliness, and bring global leadership back to the agency hurt by a morally bankrupt French predecessor is neither reasonable nor feasible.
What makes the EU, and unfortunately the United States, think it possible is only their clubby consciousness of kind. Asian members' sense of victimization is justifiable: In 1997, Korea and some East Asian nations underwent a most stringent restructuring, and its aftereffects are still being felt. That is not the case with their European counterparts.
This world is not the world of 1945, when only 44 countries were members of the newly-born IMF and its sister World Bank, the top jobs of which were shared between Europeans and Americans. The time has long past for the U.S. and EU to allow larger equities to emerging economies to better reflect changed global balance of economic power.
The election process of these institutions also needs to be more open, merit-based and transparent. It would be best if Lagarde would fill the remaining term of her disgraced compatriot, during which the agency introduces necessary reforms to enhance its credibility, operational efficiency and rock-bottom leadership.
In the case her job is prolonged to an entire new term, the governments will have to do more fundamental overhauling of the global financial order, including the replacement of the G8 with the G20, to better match each member's or region's rights to their individual responsibility. Major Asian countries should be putting their respective financial houses to challenge for the fund's highest post.
Before dreaming of a Korean in the top IMF job, the nation will need to release its financial sector from the finance ministry cliques' grip and re-learn the basic concept of creditworthiness, as shown by the ongoing savings bank scandal, which, spoken roughly, was nothing but the robbing of clients' money by bank operators.
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