The IMF and the European Debt Crisis

This book explores the IMF's engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. It explains the nature and consequences of the assistance provided to Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus by the "troika"--the IMF, European Central Bank, and European Commission. It also analyzes how the euro area developments interacted with and affected the rest of Europe, including the United Kingdom, where the political fallout from post-financial crisis populism--in the form of "Brexit" from the European Union--was, in the end, the most extreme. The IMF's European programs were caught up in big geopolitical debates about the appropriate role of the IMF and embroiled the institution in numerous controversies. These involved the exceptionally large lending, whether or not to impose losses on private creditors, and the mix between external financing and internal adjustment undertaken by the assisted countries. The Fund also found itself confronting longstanding questions about its governance and evenhandedness in the treatment of different segments of its member countries. The book explores these controversies in the context of the sweeping geopolitical debates that developed about the role of the Fund and examines the intellectual and policy shifts that took place in the IMF as a result.