Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), discusses fragility in the global economy and how the IMF can mitigate international financial crises.
Bio
Thomas H. Glocer
Tom Glocer is the CEO of Thomson Reuters and former CEO of Reuters.
Christine Lagarde
Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde is a French lawyer and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund since July 5, 2011. Previously, she held various ministerial posts in the French government: she was Minister of Economic Affairs, Finances and Industry and before that Minister of Agriculture and Fishing and Minister of Trade in the government of Dominique de Villepin. Lagarde was the first woman ever to become minister of Economic Affairs of a G8 economy, and is the first woman to ever head the IMF.
International Monetary Fund headquarters, Washington, D.C.Courtesy, International Monetary FundSpecialized agency of the United Nations system. It was conceived at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and officially founded in 1945 as a voluntary cooperative institution to help ensure the smooth international buying and selling of currency. More than 180 countries are members of the IMF. Its principal functions are stabilizing currency-exchange rates, financing the short-term balance-of-payments deficits of member countries, and providing advice and technical assistance to borrowing countries. Members contribute operating funds and receive voting rights according to their volume of international trade, national income, and international reserve holdings; the U.S. holds in excess of one-sixth of the voting rights, more than twice the percentage of any other member. The IMF has no coercive power over members, but it can refuse to lend money to members that do not agree to adhere to its policies; as a last resort it can ask members to withdraw from the organization. Critics of the IMF contend that the austerity and privatization measures it requires of borrowing countries reduce economic growth, deepen and prolong financial crises, and create severe hardships for the world's poorest people. See alsoInternational Bank for Reconstruction and Development; World Bank.
member. 
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