Restructuring IMF Decision Making

It seems that the European Union's "single-entity" mode of operation (a strategy discussed in the last chapter of the book as one of the two key modes of operation the EU switches between) is running into political troubles. Asia Times reports that the United States--incidentally, the only state that has veto power in the governing board of the IMF--is putting pressure on the EU to cut its representation in the bank's board of governors from the nine (of the twenty-four) seats it occupies currently to "ensure appropriate representation for emerging powers, such as China and India, as well as for poor countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions." As a counter-demand, the EU authorities have begun demanding that the USA should give up its veto power in the board.

There is even chatter about the possibility of an IMF-president from China.

It is difficult to imagine a more unambiguous empirical instance to demonstrate the political dimension of the declining global economic weight of western Europe (and the USA), a key theme of the argument developed in my book.

We are living in interesting times indeed.