Maseru, Feb.28 — Alarm is rising over Washington’s potential withdrawal from global institutions, including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with the no-show of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at G20 meetings adding to anxiety.
The U.S. and its allies formed the two institutions in the ashes of World War II to encourage global integration and forestall future wars.
The executive director of the Russian Chess Federation told RIA news agency that Spassky’s death was a huge loss for the world of chess.
The IMF is a lender of last resort to countries in trouble from Greece during its financial crisis, Argentina amid successive debt defaults and even the United Kingdom after a 1976 economic meltdown.
Lending ranges from emergency cash to tackle balance of payment crises to precautionary lines to prevent a crunch.
It attaches conditions to the loans dispatched in tranches to ensure countries enact reforms, usually requiring cuts to wasteful spending, more transparent budgets, rooting out corruption or raising tax revenues. Investors use IMF data on GDP and growth as the trigger to determine whether certain debt instruments that link payments to economic performance give them more or sometimes less money. . . .
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Source: REUTERS
