Is the IMF Still Relevant?

As countries grappled with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years, many turned to global financial agencies for support, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. But in some cases, at least, the agencies’ playbook of reforms and austerity in exchange for loans, no longer seemed suitable.

The IMF and the World Bank—along with the United Nations and the world’s other dominant international organizations—were created after World War Two, to serve the global order at the time. In the decades since, that order had changed dramatically. Are these institutions serving the world in the best possible way? 

To answer that question, Foreign Policy’s Editor in Chief, Ravi Agrawal, sat down recently with Mark Malloch Brown, who spent years at the World Bank, the United Nations’ Development Program, and the United Nations thinking through these very issues. Malloch Brown is now president of the Open Society Foundations. 

We’re featuring their conversation in the latest episode of our podcast Global Reboot. The show is produced by Foreign Policy in partnership with the Doha Forum.

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