Here’s another powerful article that examines the mistakes made by the IMF in relation to Greece. It’s a good read by Guntram Wolf, director of European think-tank, Bruegel.

via Olivier Blanchard fails to recognise two major IMF mistakes in Greece | Guntram B. Wolff at Bruegel.org.

Personally, I agree with the conclusions:

The IMF spectacularly failed on two fronts: earlier debt restructuring and substantial and early reforms to restore the competitiveness of Greece. The former would have allowed running lower primary surpluses in the future. It would have made the programme more credible allowing confidence to be restored; the latter would have been the best way of minimizing the unavoidable shrinkage of the Greek pre-crisis bubble by boosting exports.

The article perhaps does not go as far as a recent publication in the HBR, which blames the ECB as well as the IMF.

Sadly, under Cristine Lagarde’s leadership, the IMF has become German Chancellor, Angela Merkel‘s poodle. It would be better if Lagarde resigned and a was replaced with a world-ranking professional economist. She’s a lawyer and a politician by background, without a background in economics, she was always too weak to lead the IMF. Unfortunately, the leader’s role at the IMF is a political decision and has nothing to do with expertise.

Apart from the IMF, surely the other guilty parties are the ECB, the EC, plus Germany and Greece?

Thoughts?