By Kavaljit Singh | Letter (FT) | September 21, 2018
Martin Sandbu rightly warns about the diminishing role of the IMF as a crisis manager (Free Lunch, September 19). The challenges faced by the fund are much bigger than its lack of financial resources to put out fires. The current financial market turmoil in Argentina shows the IMF’s standby loan of $50bn — the largest ever credit line in IMF history — has failed to provide an effective anchor for addressing financial vulnerabilities and bolstering market confidence.
The immediate disbursement of $15bn…
By Kavaljit Singh | Research Report | September 2018
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers that set off a chain of events that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The global financial crisis of 2008 was a watershed moment for the global banking industry as it revealed a pattern of excessive risk-taking by private banks to maximize short-term profits along with shortcomings in the regulatory framework. The financial crisis has reignited an intense debate on the…
By Kavaljit Singh | Briefing Paper # 23 | September 4, 2018
Argentina’s currency crisis is deepening. On August 29, the peso crashed more than 7 percent – the biggest one-day fall since December 2015 when President Mauricio Macri allowed the currency to float freely and removed capital controls. In a two-minute televised address on that day, Mr Macri said he had requested the International Monetary Fund to early release funds from a $50 billion stand-by arrangement. The televised address by President Macri did not help to eliminate market uncertainty….
