Greeks Furious Over IMF Apology

(Reuters) - Greeks reacted with an air of vindication and outrage at the International Monetary Fund's admission it erred in its handling of the country's bailout, berating an apology that comes too late to salvage an economy and countless lives in ruins.

Anger was palpable on the streets of Athens, where the EU-IMF austerity recipe that the Washington-based fund says it sharply misjudged has left rows of shuttered stores and many scrounging for scraps of food in trash cans.

"Really? Thanks for letting us know but we can't forgive you," said Apostolos Trikalinos, a 59-year old garbage collector and a father of two.

"Let's not fool ourselves. They'll never give us anything back. I'm sorry for all the people who killed themselves because of austerity. How are we going to bring them back? How?"

Read the rest here.

Recovery will be 'painful', IMF chief warns

Heavily indebted countries like the UK face years more “painful” austerity to get their economies back on an even keel, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde has warned.

Urging policymakers to deliver on their promises of co-ordinated global action to restore growth, she said: “For many economies, under present circumstances it will take years of fiscal adjustment to get back to pre-crisis levels. And again, without sufficient growth, we should not delude ourselves about how painful this is going to be.”

Speaking at the Peterson Institute for International Economics ahead of next month’s annual IMF meetings, she called on leaders to stop simply making promises and to start delivering on them.

Read the rest here.

IMF: World could face a ‘1930s moment’ unless more is done

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde warned of a “1930s moment” for the world economy if Europe does not solve its fiscal problems, and said Germany must contribute more money to stave off financial disaster.

In a public appeal Monday at a Berlin think tank, Lagarde voiced what has become a growing unease among fund officials about Europe’s potential to derail the world economy. Any number of events — a messy default in Greece, a bank failure, a disruption in the region’s financial markets – could be a trigger for a global economic meltdown.

Read the rest here.

IMF Rudderless As Europe Burns

NEW YORK — The sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, have cast uncertainty over global efforts to prevent Europe’s debt crisis from spinning out of control and raise questions about the future of one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.

At the Washington-based IMF, which makes emergency loans to struggling economies, Strauss-Kahn has been a muscular advocate for aiding Greece, Ireland and Portugal as they have fought to avoid insolvency. A default by a developed European economy would shock the global financial markets and endanger the nascent economic recovery in the United States.

The IMF on Sunday named Strauss-Kahn’s second-in-command, former banker John Lipsky, as his replacement. But Lipsky was planning to step down at the end of the summer, and while a European has long led the IMF, countries such as China and India are considering nominating one of their own for the top spot. That could also have wide ramifications for the organization, whose emerging market members have complained that it shows more generous treatment toward European countries than those in the developing world.

Read the rest here.