Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Oh no they didn't

French Budget Minister Francois Baroin claimed today that China supports French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as candidate to be the new head of the International Monetary Fund.
"It's a European consensus," he told France's Europe 1 radio. "The euro needs our attention, we need to have the Europeans (on board), the Chinese support the candidacy of Christine Lagarde."
-Reuters

Unfortunately for Baroin, and all of Europe, that simply isn't true.
The BRICS were quick to push back, reminding the backwards, debt-plagued old world where all roads into the future travel through.
In a unique show of force and unity, the IMF executive directors from Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa issued a joint statement in which they called for an end to the “obsolete unwritten convention” that head of the fund must hail from Europe.
“We are concerned with the public statements made recently by high-level European officials to the effect that the position of managing director should continue to be occupied by a European,” the executive directors said in a statement released by the IMF in Washington. “The convention that the selection of the managing director is made, in practice, on the basis of nationality undermines the legitimacy of the fund.”
-Globe and Mail

In their statement, the BRICS reminded everyone that some former Euro heavyweight named, appropriately, Jean-Claude Junker (seriously), had said back in 2007 that DSK would "probably" be the last European IMF head.
Problem is, there doesn't yet appear to be a good candidate from any 'emerging economies,' and the one name that has surfaced, Agustin Carstens, is some pig from Mexico that most people don't take seriously.
Really? Mexico?
And so the search for another pro-liquidity pervert continues...