Monetary Fund

WASHINGTON -- Asia's financial turmoil has turned a global spotlight on a small, quiet but immensely powerful international agency whose mission is to tell governments and countries what they don't want to hear.The International Monetary Fund acts as a combination cop, fireman, judge and doctor of the world's economies. In the past decade, Russia, Mexico, and lately Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea have bowed to its will, confessed their misdeeds and accepted the fiscal equivalent of cold baths, tightened belts, bitter medicine and broccoli.

LONDON - Britain is planning a new effort to help poor countries reduce their huge debts by offering to pay off 10 percent of the total owed to international agencies and challenging other nations to follow suit, said Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer. In an address today to an advocacy group called the Trade Justice Movement, Brown also plans to repeat an earlier proposal that the International Monetary Fund revalue its vast gold reserves, now priced at a tenth of their market value, and use the proceeds to cancel some Third World debt, according to the a text of his remarks published yesterday in the Guardian and later confirmed by the Treasury.

This week is the 50th birthday of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but not everyone is celebrating. For the vast majority of people living in the Third World, these two enormously powerful institutions have brought economic hardship and ecological devastation.The World Bank financed highways through the rain forests of northwest Brazil, accelerating their destruction. It backed Indonesia's policy of forcibly relocating people into its undeveloped eastern islands, causing extensive disruption of indigenous communities and of the forest that supported them.

WASHINGTON - Soon after arriving in the capital, Rob Klish heard the news about the city's Code Orange terror alert. Though his family trip took six months to plan, the upstate New Yorker thought about turning back. "If we'd known, maybe we'd have changed our plans," said Klish, 35, a computer services worker from Morrisville, N.Y.: He might have taken his wife and two kids farther west to avoid the heightened terror warning. Instead, he is preparing for even more adventures in color-coded anxiety with the trip's next stop.

LONDON - Britain is planning a new effort to help poor countries reduce their huge debts by offering to pay off 10 percent of the total owed to international agencies and challenging other nations to follow suit, said Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer. In an address today to an advocacy group called the Trade Justice Movement, Brown also plans to repeat an earlier proposal that the International Monetary Fund revalue its vast gold reserves, now priced at a tenth of their market value, and use the proceeds to cancel some Third World debt, according to the a text of his remarks published yesterday in the Guardian and later confirmed by the Treasury.

WASHINGTON -- The International Monetary Fund said yesterday that it had endorsed Russia's economic reform plan, paving the way for Moscow to receive up to $4 billion in IMF aid over the next year.IMF officials said Russia could begin receiving loans from the fund as early as May, a move that will place the Russian economy to some extent under the stewardship of the IMF.To qualify for the aid, Moscow still would be required to meet certain conditions including stringent targets to control the inflation rate and budget deficit.

WASHINGTON -- To help the former Soviet bloc's transition to a market economy, the International Monetary Fund unveiled a program yesterday to provide billions of dollars in loans to Russia and more than 20 other countries under less stringent conditions than those governing the typical IMF loans.Michel Camdessus, the fund's managing director, said that the program would provide $4 billion to $6 billion in loans over the next 18 months to help former Soviet bloc nations buy imported goods, ranging from food to spare parts needed to modernize industry.

WASHINGTON -- The seven big industrial nations endorsed a new approach yesterday to dealing with financial problems in developing countries, saying they would work together to make it easier for governments in dire economic straits to repay debts more slowly. The initiative was the most concrete to emerge from two days of meetings here among finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 7 nations. It could produce some of the most fundamental changes in international finance since the Asian financial crisis of 1998 rocked the global economy.

NEW YORK -- International investors seemed to increase confidence in Mexico's future yesterday as the country's new finance minister, Guillermo Ortiz, told banking officials that his country could pay its debts.In a whirlwind day in New York, Mr. Ortiz also sought to reassure investors by saying that Mexico would ask the International Monetary Fund for its stamp of approval on the economic-recovery plan it announced Tuesday, after having devalued the peso in December.Addressing a standing-room-only crowd in the ballroom of the Pierre Hotel yesterday morning, the American-educated Mr. Ortiz said Mexico now had $24 billion in new international credits and monetary reserves.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has chosen James D. Wolfensohn, an investment banker and arts patron, as president of the World Bank, the White House announced yesterday.The selection is formally a recommendation to the World Bank's directors, who elect the president. By tradition, the World Bank presidency goes to an American and the directorship of the International Monetary Fund to a European.Mr. Wolfensohn, 61, will succeed Lewis T. Preston, who is ill with cancer and who has asked to retire before his five-year term ends next year.

WASHINGTON -- The seven big industrial nations endorsed a new approach yesterday to dealing with financial problems in developing countries, saying they would work together to make it easier for governments in dire economic straits to repay debts more slowly. The initiative was the most concrete to emerge from two days of meetings here among finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 7 nations. It could produce some of the most fundamental changes in international finance since the Asian financial crisis of 1998 rocked the global economy.

THE WORLD is having a good year: The International Monetary Fund's annual report, released last week, forecasts 4.7 percent growth in the global economy this year, up from 3.3 percent last year and the most in more than a decade. Almost every part of the world is sharing in the gain. Asian countries and Russia, economic crisis points in 1997 and 1998, are recovering. Japan seems to be emerging from a decade of stagnation. The European Union and the United States are prosperous. Much of Latin America is doing well.

WASHINGTON -- He asked for God's blessing on the young protesters -- right after wrestling one of them to the asphalt. He charmed reporters while refusing to share any details of police strategy with them. He spoke expansively about American democracy and openness, then ordered armored vehicles and helmeted platoons to close down half of central Washington. For many people in the district, the most impressive demonstration last weekend wasn't the one against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

WASHINGTON -- Water lubricates the marble outside the International Monetary Fund's headquarters here, trickling across coin-shaped stairs into a reserve pool before circulating back to the top.It's an apt symbol for the IMF itself, a fount of money for needy nations. But there's a difference. The fountains at H and 19th streets are water-tight. The institution inside may not be.Already on the defensive for its handling of the Asian economic crisis, the IMF has recently been jolted by allegations that its funds on loan to Russia's central bank were siphoned off by criminals.

WASHINGTON -- The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the global financial turmoil, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program.Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess.

THE MAIN DANGER to prosperity has shifted, President Clinton decreed, from inflation to -- though he avoided the word -- depression.In his speech Monday, the president made as forceful a case as can be made that the Federal Reserve Board should lower interest rates in concert with rate reductions elsewhere to end the financial crisis that is making people suddenly poorer in Asia, Russia and Latin America. Whether Chairman Alan Greenspan agrees, however, won't be known until Sept. 29.Mr. Greenspan hinted, in a Sept.

WASHINGTON -- The United States is preparing to commit U.S. taxpayer funds as part of a lending program of at least $30 billion to try to insulate Brazil, and with it the rest of Latin America, from the worst effects of the global financial turmoil, according to U.S. and foreign officials assembling the program.Details of the U.S. contribution, which is expected to total several billion dollars in direct aid or loan guarantees, have yet to be negotiated. But several congressional leaders have been alerted to the likelihood that the administration would have to act while Congress is in recess.

SWALLOWING the bitter pills, South Korea's National Assembly yesterday enacted the stringent financial reforms that President-elect Kim Dae Jung opposed before his Dec. 18 election and now concedes to be necessary.As a result, a single regulatory agency will police banks, brokerages and insurance companies. The ceiling will rise on foreign ownership of firms. The central bank will have swifter power over interest rates. Subsidiaries of a conglomerate will no longer cross-fund each other's expansion.

SWALLOWING the bitter pills, South Korea's National Assembly yesterday enacted the stringent financial reforms that President-elect Kim Dae Jung opposed before his Dec. 18 election and now concedes to be necessary.As a result, a single regulatory agency will police banks, brokerages and insurance companies. The ceiling will rise on foreign ownership of firms. The central bank will have swifter power over interest rates. Subsidiaries of a conglomerate will no longer cross-fund each other's expansion.

BECAUSE the Central Bank of Korea faced imminent payments of $20 billion it did not have on the short-term debts of insolvent commercial banks, South Korea has agreed to legalize substantial foreign ownership of Korean firms, curtail growth, accept unemployment, hold down inflation, cut the current account deficit and regulate its financial industry, liquidating companies that deserve it.These are reported to be the strings on the biggest International Monetary...