About That Economic Summit…

Will history repeat itself? Several observers of the financial crisis have pegged the upcoming summit at Camp David as a new Bretton Woods—the post WWII summit that created the IMF and World Bank. Sebastian Mallaby cautions against such optimism. First, the tonics for our current woes—"moving swap contracts between financial institutions onto centralized exchanges" and shrinking "the pyramids of debt in the financial system"—don't need international solutions. Moreover, Britain and France are unlikely to cede control of the IMF to rising powers like China and India, which international reform would require.