IMF managing director arrested, accused of sexual attack

[Joe Hillshoist]

Voters in Iceland issued a resounding “no” in a referendum on whether to approve a renegotiated deal to compensate Britain and the Netherlands over the 2008 collapse of Icesave Bank, leaving the issue to be settled in court.

Remeber what happened in ireland?

http://www.france24.com/en/20110410-vot ... e-iceland#

In July 2008, analysts from Cambridge and Yale Universities had reported that tuberculosis (TB) in countries with IMF loans rose sharply. The strict conditions on IMF loans were blamed for thousands of extra TB deaths in Eastern Europe, and former Soviet republics. A UK TB charity backed the Public Library of Science (PLoS) study findings - but the IMF had firmly rejected them, as per a BBC news (July 2008).

David Stuckler from Cambridge University had said to BBC in July 2008 that "If we really want to create sustainable economic growth, we need first to ensure that we have taken care of people's most basic health needs."

The BBC news further said that "in recent years, it [IMF] has offered assistance to 21 countries in the region, in the form of loans offered in exchange for the meeting of strict economic targets. The researchers claimed it was efforts to meet these targets that were undermining the fight against TB by drawing funding away from public health."

http://www.countercurrents.org/ramakant220409.htm

Anyway as far as coups go anyone ever heard of the Ivory Coast?

[Joe Hillshoist]

Fair and balanced summation of the imf.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Inte ... etary_Fund

[Peachtree Pam]

This pretty well sums up some of the most common attitudes toward DSK and his situation..

Dominique Strauss-Kahn finds sympathy in Paris

Zoe Williams discovers the French are prepared to believe anything about the IMF chief's situation – but not that

On the streets of Paris, some people think Dominique Strauss-Kahn was stitched up by President Sarkozy. Some think it was the Germans, executing that well-known route out of a common currency, where you honeytrap the main defender of the euro. And some people think it was the Americans, acting out of sheer anti-French malice, or objecting to Strauss-Kahn's observation that the US has breached its debt ceiling (it stands at $14.3 trillion).

What I didn't find was one person who actually thinks Strauss-Kahn could possibly have attempted to rape a chambermaid.

"It was a €3,000-a-night hotel," said Mehdi, who runs an olive stall in Bastille market. "He could afford any woman he wanted. He could have hired a plane and made love in the air." You can't fault his logic. Who would commit an act of sexual violence, when they can make love in the air?

"It was a very expensive hotel," said Agnes, a teacher. "Even in a mid-price establishment, I have never seen a maid come in to clean the beds. They wait till you've gone out. So it was very odd."

The waitress, Khadidja, chips in: "He's very handsome, he's got power, older men are attractive; I would have slept with him."

"Ah," returns Agnes, "but you know who he is. This maid hadn't heard of him, so maybe that's why she didn't find him attractive."

By this rationale, DSK was brought down by his poor brand reach.

Brigitte, a translator, was circumspect about the whys and whos of this conspiracy, but she distilled the common belief: "It is just so huge. He was going to be our next president. And now he's finished. It is just too big to be true."

She continued: "As a woman, I really hate it because all the people who debase women are running riot. Jack Lang [the former minister of culture] was on the radio this morning, saying words to the effect of 'nobody died'."

The French love of the conspiracy theory is well known: not only do they rarely buy the official line, they look at you as if you're the village idiot if you do. This, I guess, is at least partly rooted in their fabled privacy laws – the rich are so well-protected that when you get the sense that the media aren't giving you the full story, it's because they aren't.

But even while nobody believes the attempted rape allegation, everybody has a rumour about Strauss-Kahn's insatiable appetites and the fact that his moves were not limited to "simple salon seduction" (I am quoting journalist Christophe Deloire, who wrote a chapter about DSK in his 2006 book, Sexus Politicus – he does not want to talk about his investigation in light of the attempted rape allegation, for reasons he explains, sort of, in this blog).

Passions run extremely high. Accordion player Gerard Raimond explained DSK's popularity thus: "The problem is that the Americans see everything as black and white. I know people who have met him, and they say he is a very fine man. Very generous. He would always reach out the hand of friendship."

Then a woman behind him, probably in her 60s, started shouting at him: "But that's not the only place he's put his hands. It's lamentable! Lamentable!" And then she dashed off, furious. I'm trying to imagine a scandal in Britain that would ever have people almost fighting in the street.

Adette, 60, from Pas de Calais, said: "I've got goosebumps even hearing his name. I feel devastated. I feel like this has happened to a member of my own family." She blamed, in this order, the American media for showing him in handcuffs (this is illegal in France); and DSK's own wife, family and political cohorts, for not getting him to seek help sooner for his unnatural appetites. He is a "chaud lapin", she conceded. I asked the photographer for a translation. She said: "There really isn't one … you just have to imagine a very busy rabbit."

Fatiha, a 37-year-old art dealer, is more worried about the political consequences for the elections in nine months' time. "We are going to end up with just a right, and a far right. This is going to kill the left."

DSK was seen not just as the heavyweight of the Socialists, but as having kept himself clear of the party's infighting by quitting domestic politics to head the IMF. He was such a shoo-in for the leadership that columnists – in the plural – are asking whether this was an acte manqué. Literally, a "Freudian slip", but their phrase is more profound than our usual slip-of-the-tongue meaning: did his subconscious deliberately sabotage him, because he did not want to fight an election and become president of France? Was it really his wife who wanted him to become president?

"It is a terrible sadness for France," Daphne, a 19-year-old student, told me. "In America, they want their politicians to be perfect. We want our politicians to be respectable but we tolerate more." He's a bit of a busy rabbit, but not a rapist, then? "In France, we have presumption of innocence!"

[lupercal]

^ that basically accords with readers' comments I've come across, though more mildly expressed. Sarkozy seems to be loathed by all, not that it's not hard to figure out why, and this destroys their hopes of getting rid of the fink. More from the article:

Gerard Raimond, pictured with Huguette Bonnaud, said he knew people who had met Dominique Strauss-Kahn. 'They say he is a very fine man,' he said.
guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 May 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... athy-paris

[lupercal]

When the judiciary is a political tool
Boris Volkhonsky - Voice of Russia - May 20, 2011



The trial of the now former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn highlights a trend that started at the end of the 1990s, namely that the judiciary more and more often becomes a tool for political influence, rather than an instrument for settling legal questions.

Today, almost no politician can be sure he won’t end up in court – even if a domestic court decides against putting one of their nationals in the dock, there are sure to be foreign courts that will be quite happy to meddle in what looks like the life of one person, but inevitably has far-reaching consequences.

It is too early to tell how Strauss-Kahn’s case will pan out and whether or not he will be found guilty. But one thing is for sure: he’s had to step down as the head of the IMF and he won’t be running for the French presidency in 2012. Particularly with Nicolas Sarkozy’s plummeting popularity, Strauss-Kahn was the favourite to win and now the socialists will have to find another candidate – and quickly – something that will benefit the current president.

So the answer to who benefits from the charges against Strauss-Kahn is obvious, and Strauss-Kahn isn’t on his own – think Silvio Berlusconi’s continuing court woes in Italy. You can even recall some lesser figures, like Russian citizen Viktor Bout who was seized in Thailand through the joint efforts of Thai police and US special services and then extradited – not to his home country, but to the US. I won’t even mention the countless inmates of the ill-famed Guantanamo Bay prison, many of whom have been locked up without even being charged.

You can hardly say that the involvement of the judiciary in political processes is a recent phenomenon. I would say that notorious Spanish examining magistrate Baltasar Garzon started the ball rolling. Garzon didn’t so much become known as a fervent pursuer of Colombian drug-traffickers and other criminals, as the judge who issued an international arrest warrant for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, which was later used to arrest him in the UK.

Judges in other countries followed Garzon’s lead. Today, not even the current head of any state around the world can be sure that he or she will be immune from prosecution when visiting a country that has filed charges against him or her. For instance, the Portuguese authorities charged Indonesia’s former president Suharto, while the French did the same for Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Meanwhile, the former dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Laurent-Desire Kabila spent a long time negotiating the terms of his visit to France and Belgium, fearing getting cuffed right at the airport.

We can also recall the case against the ex-president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, which culminated in his mysterious death. Indeed, other processes on the former Yugoslavia, when courts obviously applied selective justice in line with a political agenda. What we’re seeing is that one of the pillars of democracy, the separation of powers, is disintegrating in the West of today and the third branch of power, the judiciary, is becoming the first, dictating the rules of the game to the legislature and the executive. not sure I'd go that far but there does seem to be an uptick in judicial sexcapades.

This is what the resonant court cases of the last few years have shown. This is not a question of today, or even yesterday - it all probably started with Bill Clinton. The biggest cases don’t just testify to the judiciary’s prevalence over all other arms of power, but also that oftentimes the wrong sorts of charges are presented to the accused. I don’t know what sort of IMF head Strauss-Kahn was, but it doesn’t seem that he received too much public criticism. But he is not being punished for what he did professionally, nor is he out of the presidential race over his political positions. Themis has found an “asymmetrical” way of influence – via the bedroom.

The same happened to Bill Clinton – a popular but weak president. His opponents sought to throw him out of office not because of what he did as president, but because of a brief fling. Sure, formally, it was because he lied under oath, but the whole thing started with his “sexual relations with that woman” – Monica Lewisky (incidentally, a fully consensual relationship).

Political analysts have even come up with a new term: the “sexualisation of politics”. Combined with the growing omnipotence of the judiciary, this may change the entire political landscape in the nearest future.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/05/20/50576679.html

[lupercal]

Strauss-Kahn: scandal across the Atlantic
Nina Dmitriyeva - Voice of Russia - May 21, 2011



IMF’s chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn submitted his resignation the day after he was detained on charges of a sexual assault. Mr.Strauss-Kahn was in custody in a New York jail when he announced that he was stepping down from the IMF’s top job. Like an exciting novel, this sex scandal includes several storylines.

According to the political one, Dominique Strauss Kahn, who was regarded President Sarkozy’s major rival in the 2012 elections with 46 percent against Sarkozy’s 17 percent in performance ratings, was framed.

According to the economic one, Washington was dissatisfied about the IMF’s handing out of funds to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and four other countries of the EU – Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Poland. Under the chairmanship of Dominique Strauss-Kahn the Fund allocated a total of 100 billion euro to pay these countries’ loans. Since the United States’ annual fee into the IMF is the biggest, Mr.Kahn’s intention of supporting Europe first was met with disapproval from Washington.

Many analysts say that the scandal involving such a figure as the IMF chief couldn’t have happened without the consent of the US authorities.

Some experts fear that the current IMF crisis following the arrest of Dominique-Strauss Kahn might lead to the deterioration of the Eurozone crisis. The current debates are focusing on who should succeed Strauss-Kahn – an European or an American? Chancellor Angela Merkel has this to say.

"Given the situation, when countries of the Eurozone have to pay their debts and the IMF has to step in to help them out, a single EU candidate, backed by all EU countries, is the best option."

While the top candidate for the post of IMF’s managing-director is France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, the EU is still to come up with an official statement to this effect. In the meantime, countries of the CIS have nominated Grigory Marchenko, Chairman of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, but he is practically unknown on the European political scene.

According to tradition, the IMF is headed by a European, his deputy is an American and the World Bank’s President comes from the US.

Now, Washington seems set to break the tradition. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has named American John Lipski acting chief of the IMF, praising him as a good manager suitable for the job. And David Lipton, undersecretary of the Treasury for economic issues, is expected to occupy the post of the IMF’s deputy managing-director.

(snip)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s defense managed to get him out of jail on bail at the second attempt. The prosecution is to deliver a verdict on June 6th. Until then, the ex-IMF boss will be living in a rented apartment with a round-the-clock video monitoring, and accompanied by an armed guard and an electronic bracelet on his wrist.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/05/20/50576679.html

[kenoma]

So the answer to who benefits from the charges against Strauss-Kahn is obvious, and Strauss-Kahn isn’t on his own – think Silvio Berlusconi’s continuing court woes in Italy.

[Stephen Morgan]

Hasn't done Silvio any harm. But that's not how I see it, the judiciary flexing it's muscles, as I see it this is the judiciary being used as a tool. When, for example, Lord Justice Eady took it upon himself to single-handedly invent libel tourism, and cast off writs silencing people from Kiev to Kansas he could easily have been stopped, and when the public outcry got loud enough he was, by being placed under the supervision of a less objectionable justice. The Americans took legislative action to stop his judgements being enforced over there. But they let it go until the outcry forced their hand, because it was in the service of Khalid bin Mahfouz and Nadhmi Auchi and Alisher Usmanov and a cadre of other international super-rich. The judiciary are at fault for being too easily controlled, not for being overly powerful.

[JackRiddler]

So the answer to who benefits from the charges against Strauss-Kahn is obvious, and Strauss-Kahn isn’t on his own – think Silvio Berlusconi’s continuing court woes in Italy.

Ten years of Berlusconi using executive privileges and media power to laugh through all court attempts to haul him in on a book-length rap sheet of criminal moves by his far-flung interests shows how awesome is the power judiciaries now typically have, relative to executives. The other important thing is to understand that the richest and most powerful and most unaccountable members of the power elite are perpetually victimized by jealous inferiors and hidden deceivers, just for wanting to have a bit of fun. Look at how mean the ungrateful Egyptian masses were to Mubarak!

.

[vanlose kid]

French women attack misogyny in Strauss-Kahn case


PARIS | Sat May 21, 2011 1:15pm EDT

(Reuters) - Angry French feminists say local media have been awash with male chauvinist comments since the arrest of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges he attempted to rape a New York hotel maid.

Feminist organizations published a petition saying they were "stunned by the daily flood of misogynist comments by public figures" since the French former finance minister was detained. He denies the charges and is currently on bail.

In their statement, the feminists said friends and allies of Strauss-Kahn had downplayed the plight of the alleged victim in their rush to defend the Socialist, who until his fall was well placed to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 elections.

The lawyer for the maid said his client was a 32-year-old widow from the West African nation of Guinea, who has a daughter aged 15.

"We do not know what happened in New York Saturday May 14, but we know what has been happening in France in the past week. We are witnessing a sudden rise of sexist and reactionary reflexes, so quick to surface among part of the French elite," the groups said in a statement on the website of Le Monde.

Organised by groups including "Osez le feminisme" and "La Barbe," the petition was signed by more than a 1,000 women, including TV journalist Audrey Pulvar, whose partner Arnaud Montebourg is bidding to be the Socialist candidate next year.

"There is a certain impunity in France when it comes to this kind of uninhibited sexism," the groups said.

The groups said that 75,000 women were raped in France every year and that sexist language in public tended to minimise the gravity of crime, turning it into a vague and more or less acceptable act.

The groups referred to specific statements, including one by former culture minister and Strauss-Kahn ally Jack Lang, who said Strauss-Kahn should have been released on bail earlier, considering that "nobody has died."

Journalist Jean-Franois Kahn, no relation, denied rape had taken place and dismissed the affair as "troussage de domestique," a phrase that evokes a master having non-consensual sex with a servant.

A friend of Strauss-Kahn and his journalist wife Anne Sinclair, Kahn later apologised for the remark.

"This kind of language generates an intolerable confusion between sexual freedom and violence toward women. Violent acts, rape, attempted rape and harassment are all the mark of men's desire to dominate women's bodies," the feminist groups said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/ ... 1S20110521

*

[vanlose kid]

Strauss-Kahn team consults ex-CIA officers' firm
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Sat May 21, 2011 7:30am EDT

(Reuters) - The legal team defending former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn against sexual assault charges has informally sought public relations advice from a Washington consulting firm run by former CIA officers and U.S. diplomats, Reuters has learned.

TD International is the same company Strauss-Kahn, then a private citizen, hired in 2007 to advise him on how to navigate international and Washington politics in his bid to become managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

Documents filed in 2008 with the Foreign Agents Registration section of the U.S. Justice Department show that Strauss-Kahn, who is French, retained TD International as his "U.S.-based communications resource."

Strauss-Kahn, 62, who was seen as a front-runner for the French presidency until his arrest, has been charged with trying to rape a hotel housekeeper in New York. He has denied the charges and his lawyer has said he will plead not guilty.

A person familiar with the work TD International did for Strauss-Kahn in 2007 said his representatives consulted the firm informally after his arrest last Saturday and asked for advice related to his predicament.

If the firm at some point becomes formally involved in his defense, the source said, its role will be in helping other Strauss-Kahn advisors, including Paris-based public relations experts, engage in "crisis management."

But the source, who asked for anonymity, said the firm had not been formally engaged. A lawyer for Strauss-Kahn did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesman for TD International told Reuters on Friday: "We don't comment on client relationships and activities. However, our past work with Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accurately reflected in (Justice Department) filings."

WORKING THE MEDIA

A contract between TD International and Strauss-Kahn, dated July 18, 2007, shows he hired the firm to "conduct a specific public relations campaign" and "work is to begin immediately and continue until ascendancy of client to head of IMF."

The contract says Strauss-Kahn was to pay the firm 20,000 euros, then equivalent to about $27,600.

According to the source, TD International helped advise Strauss-Kahn on U.S. and international political maneuvering related to the choice of a new IMF chief.

The global lender has always been headed by a western European but the former French finance minister's bid for the post was being challenged by Russia and a group of developing nations, who were strongly pushing their own candidates.

In addition to advising Strauss-Kahn on political matters, TD International introduced him to journalists from media such as the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

The 2007 contract was signed on TD International's behalf by Ronald Slimp, who the firm's website says was a former U.S. diplomat and trade negotiator.

The website describes the firm's founder, William Green, as a former diplomat who is fluent in French and "participated in the management of the Anglo-American and U.S.-Canadian intelligence relationships when posted to Washington."

The website identifies two other partners in the firm as former CIA officers.

Justice Department filings show TD International was also registered as the U.S. representative of Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and a one-time prime minister.

A 2007 press release posted on the firm's website says it was the "registered representative of Ms. Tymoshenko's political party."

(Additional reporting by Basil Katz, Brian Grow and Glenn Somerville; Editing by David Storey)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/ ... 8320110521

*

[Peachtree Pam]

^ Hmmmmm
Help with "the fix"? - not that I *ever* thought DSK would suffer.

[Peachtree Pam]

Don't know what to make of Joe Stiglitz who, for me, has always been one of the good guys - now, in this article, he just seems naive, which is strange for a player like him.

Joseph Stiglitz: the IMF cannot afford to make a mistake with Strauss-Kahn's successor

By Joseph E. Stiglitz 8:00PM BST 21 May 2011

Europe faces a financial crisis and good leadership of the IMF will be essential to finding its way out. As the world focuses its attention on the allegations against Dominique Strauss-Kahn and we think about who might replace him, it is important not to lose sight of the IMF's crucial role.

Europe has decided it cannot or will not manage the crisis on its own and has turned to the IMF. But Europe is in an awkward position. Its own Central Bank is at the centre of managing the very crisis that was helped into being by the flawed economic philosophy and policy to which it and the US Federal Reserve adhered.

Those who thought that all that was needed for the euro to succeed was fiscal discipline should have learned their lesson – Ireland and Spain had surpluses before the crisis.

Behind the scenes there is a battle – between those who put the interests of the banks first and those who put the interests of the people first. Debt restructuring would affect the balance sheet of the banks. The longer restructuring is postponed, the more debt moves onto the books of the public, the more the banks are protected.

But there is a high cost of this strategy: the citizens of the country suffer enormously in the interim and taxpayers pay the price in the long run. Even after all this, there are likely to be more crises, especially given the reluctance of those in the US and European Union to adopt adequate financial regulations.

An effective and fair IMF is essential – an institution that looks not just after creditors in the lending countries but after the well-being of all. And whatever the result of the case against Strauss-Kahn, this much is clear - he was an impressive leader of the IMF and he re-established the credibility of the institution.

He breathed fresh air into the IMF as he re-examined old doctrines such as those concerning capital controls. He raised new issues as he emphasized the critical role of employment and inequality for stability. He reasserted the role of economic science, including Keynesian economics, over the mishmash of long-discredited Wall Street doctrines, which had been central to the IMF's failures in East Asia, Latin America, and Russia.

He also listened to the increasingly vocal and informed voices of those in emerging markets. He supported the movement for reforms in the institution, including voting rights and governance.

As the IMF transitions, it is important to maintain the reforms, and carry them forward. But the hard-fought gains of the institution could easily be lost. That's why the choice of the head – and the process by which the choice is made – is so important.

It should go without saying that this implies that the head should be chosen on the basis of merit in an open and transparent process, and indeed the G20 has agreed that the old boys' system, in which Europe was entitled to head the IMF (with an American the second-in-command) has to go.

The understanding was that the next head would come from the emerging markets. To renege on that commitment would be a disaster for the IMF and the world. If the emerging world had no one to offer, that would be one thing. But there is an ample and impressive supply of qualified individuals.

The required mix of skill and experience is, to be sure, unusual. The head must have a knowledge of economic science. (As we learned in the crisis, the leading bankers not only didn't understand systemic risk; they couldn't even manage their own risk.)

The person must also have the ability to manage a complex international organization, have familiarity with the international players and the ability and credibility to deal with them forcefully. The person must also have a sense of fairness and a demonstrated competency in crisis management.

This last criterion shouldn't be difficult to meet: the world has had an ample supply of crises – Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia – and out of these some stars have emerged, such as Arminio Fraga in Brazil and Zeti Akhtar Aziz in Malaysia.

How the appointment is handled will be a true test of the IMF, especially because its governance has been widely viewed as flawed and opaque, with problems of revolving doors hardly even recognized.

Reforms giving the emerging markets more voice are moves in the right direction, but they have greatly lagged the truly enormous changes that have occurred in the global balance of economic power, illustrated by the fact that the US is still the only country with a veto.

The disparity between how the West responded to its crisis and the demands imposed on East Asia during their crisis 10 years ago have opened the IMF up to charges of hypocrisy. Not surprisingly, there is a lingering lack of confidence in the institution, and this hampers the ability of the international community to address basic global issues.

A large build up of reserves by emerging markets and developing countries (in the trillions of dollars) – motivated by countries' obvious desires to protect themselves against economic volatility – contributes to weak global demand, undermining recovery.

If they had confidence in the IMF, these countries could turn to that institution rather than self-insurance. This would be more globally efficient – but developing countries are reluctant to rely on the IMF. Will it be there for them when they need it? Will it impose onerous conditions in return for its help, as it did in the past?

The response to the IMF's major change of course on capital controls is more evidence of the lack of confidence in the institution. A decade ago, the IMF tried to change its Articles of Agreement to allow it to force countries to liberalize their capital markets. Now, it recognizes that at times, capital controls may be desirable.

Rather than responding enthusiastically to this long overdue change, emerging markets and developing countries have said: "Keep out of this. Today, you may be open, but at any moment you can be recaptured by Western financial markets that have done so well by these unstable capital flows, making money as funds flow in, and making more money in the aftermath of the havoc created as funds flow out."

In the age of globalization, international cooperation is essential, and there is a vital role for the IMF to play. It failed in the run-up to the current crisis – it promoted the deregulation and liberalization policies that led to the crisis and its rapid spread around the world.

But it seems to have learned at least some of the lessons. The Institution seems well on the way to recovering a better reputation. The gains, however, are fragile. The election of a new head will be a test the IMF can ill afford to flunk .

But at this critical time the stakes are especially high. The world needs a credible and effective International Monetary Fund

[vanlose kid]

^ ^

him and Krugman, nobel prize economists: the system is fine, just needs a few tweaks.

*

[JackRiddler]

Don't know what to make of Joe Stiglitz who, for me, has always been one of the good guys - now, in this article, he just seems naive, which is strange for a player like him.

Good guy or not (I think mostly good is true), he plays the game within the rules so as to maintain that mystical "credibility." Stiglitz is a critic, not a radical. All his talk about DSK as reformer is conditional, as in: by talking up DSK's noblesse oblige and not saying "FUCK THE IMF," I hope to encourage some changes.

The key paragraphs are true:

he re-examined old doctrines such as those concerning capital controls. He raised new issues as he emphasized the critical role of employment and inequality for stability. He reasserted the role of economic science, including Keynesian economics, over the mishmash of long-discredited Wall Street doctrines, which had been central to the IMF's failures in East Asia, Latin America, and Russia.

Notice none of this is actually changing policy, only the discourse, in a global context in which "IMF" long ago became synonymous with "Evil Empire." Of course they're looking to use the crisis as a means of regaining relevance. DSK is a neoliberal, but he has never been accused of lacking talent as a politician.

More substantively:

He also listened to the increasingly vocal and informed voices of those in emerging markets. He supported the movement for reforms in the institution, including voting rights and governance.

As though DSK or anyone had a choice, with riots in every country the IMF is trying to screw around in. IMF needs allies and support from outside its traditional sponsors' circle. You will see these same "reforms" and cosmetic diplomatic statements continue under the new leadership, whether it's the EU choice of Mme Lagand (which would fix a lot of symbolic problems) or a first non-European.

.