History of International Monetary Fund

The IMF was originally laid out as a part of the Bretton Woods system exchange agreement in 1944. During the Great Depression, countries sharply raised barriers to trade in an attempt to improve their failing economies. This led to the devaluation of national currencies and a decline in world trade. This breakdown in international monetary cooperation created a need for oversight. The representatives of 45 governments met at the Bretton Woods Conference in the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States, to discuss a framework for postwar international economic cooperation and how to rebuild Europe.

Gold Room Bretton Woods Participating Nations Display Case - Bretton Woods ConferenceMount Washington Hotel

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The IMF formally came into existence on 27 December 1945, when the first 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement.

First page of the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund

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Camille Gutt was a Belgian economist, politician, and industrialist. He served as the first Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 6 May 1946 to 5 May 1951.

Camille Gutt

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On 1 March 1947, the IMF began its financial operations.

On 8 May, France became the first country to borrow from it.

Ivar Rooth was a Swedish lawyer and economist. He served as Governor of the Swedish National Bank from 1929 to 1948 and as the second head (Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1951 to 1956.

Ivar Rooth

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Former Czechoslovakia was expelled in 1954 for "failing to provide required data" and was readmitted in 1990, after the Velvet Revolution.

Per Jacobsson (5 February 1894 – 5 May 1963) was a Swedish economist, and managing director of the International Monetary Fund from 21 November 1956 until his death in 1963.

Per Jacobsson

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Pierre-Paul Schweitzer was a French businessman who was fourth managing director of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and chairman of its executive board, serving from 1963 to 1973.

Pierre-Paul Schweitzer

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Former member Cuba (which left in 1964).

The Bretton Woods exchange rate system prevailed until 1971 when the United States government suspended the convertibility of the US$ (and dollar reserves held by other governments) into gold. This is known as the Nixon Shock.

Richard Nixon

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Hendrikus Johannes "Johan" Witteveen was a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and economist. He served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1 September 1973 until 18 June 1978.

Johan Witteveen

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The changes to the IMF articles of agreement reflecting these changes were ratified in 1976 by the Jamaica Accords.

Jacques was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 17 June 1978 to 15 January 1987.

Jacques de Larosière

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Taiwan was ejected from the IMF in 1980 after losing the support of the United States President Jimmy Carter and was replaced by the People's Republic of China.

Jimmy Carter

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Poland withdrew in 1950—allegedly pressured by the Soviet Union—but returned in 1986.

Michel Camdessus is a French economist and administrator who was Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 16 January 1987 to 14 February 2000. To date, he is the longest-serving Managing Director of the IMF.

Michel Camdessus

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The IMF provided a major lending package to Argentina (during the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression).

Köhler was appointed Managing Director and Chairman of the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2000.

Horst Köhler

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The IMF also provided another major lending package to Uruguay (after the 2002 Uruguay banking crisis).

Rodrigo Rato was managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2004 to 2007.

Rodrigo Rato

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On 1 November 2007, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was formally named as the new head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

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In May 2010, the IMF participated, in 3:11 proportion, in the first Greek bailout that totaled €110 billion, to address the great accumulation of public debt, caused by continuing large public sector deficits. As part of the bailout, the Greek government agreed to adopt austerity measures that would reduce the deficit from 11% in 2009 to "well below 3%" in 2014.

Former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in connection with charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel room attendant and resigned on 18 May. The charges were later dropped.

Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde was the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Christine Lagarde

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A second bailout package of more than €100 billion was agreed over the course of a few months from October 2011, during which time Papandreou (The Greek Prime Minister) was forced from office.

As of January 2012, the largest borrowers from the IMF in order were Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, and Ukraine.

On 25 March 2013, a €10 billion international bailout of Cyprus was agreed by the Troika, at the cost to the Cypriots of its agreement: to close the country's second-largest bank; to impose a one-time bank deposit levy on Bank of Cyprus uninsured deposits. No insured deposit of €100k or less was to be affected under the terms of a novel bail-in scheme.

The topic of sovereign debt restructuring was taken up by the IMF in April 2013 for the first time since 2005, in a report entitled "Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Recent Developments and Implications for the Fund's Legal and Policy Framework". The paper, which was discussed by the board on 20 May, summarised the recent experiences in Greece, St Kitts, and Nevis, Belize, and Jamaica. An explanatory interview with Deputy Director Hugh Bredenkamp was published a few days later, as was a deconstruction by Matina Stevis of the Wall Street Journal.

In the October 2013 Fiscal Monitor publication, the IMF suggested that a capital levy capable of reducing Euro-area government debt ratios to "end-2007 levels" would require a very high tax rate of about 10%.

The Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, headed at the time by Acting Director Sanjeev Gupta, produced a January 2014 report entitled "Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality" that stated that "Some taxes levied on wealth, especially on immovable property, are also an option for economies seeking more progressive taxation ... Property taxes are equitable and efficient, but underutilized in many economies ... There is considerable scope to exploit this tax more fully, both as a revenue source and as a redistributive instrument."

At the end of March 2014, the IMF secured an $18 billion bailout fund for the provisional government of Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

Former IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato was arrested on 16 April 2015 for alleged fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. On 23 February 2017, the Audiencia Nacional found Rato guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to 4 1⁄2 years' imprisonment. In September 2018, the sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Spain.

Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva-Kinova is a Bulgarian economist serving as chair and managing director of the International Monetary Fund since 2019.

Kristalina Georgieva

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On 11 March, the UK called to pledge £150 billion to the IMF catastrophe relief fund. It came to light on 27 March that "more than 80 poor and middle-income countries" had sought a bailout due to the coronavirus.

In March 2020, Kristalina Georgieva announced that the IMF stood ready to mobilize $1 trillion as its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On 13 April 2020, the IMF said that it "would provide immediate debt relief to 25 member countries under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT)" programme.

Andorra became the 190th member on 16 October 2020.

In late 2019, the IMF estimated global growth in 2020 to reach 3.4%, but due to the coronavirus, in November 2020, it expected the global economy to shrink by 4.4%.