And the walls came tumbling down

In an interview, IMF historian James Boughton talked about his book, Tearing Down Walls: The International Monetary Fund 1990-1999, and his years as the IMF's official chronicler. The title is meant to evoke several things that happened in the 1990s. The first major event was the collapse of th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFinance & Development Vol. 49; no. 1; p. 52
Main Author Ghosh, Atish Rex
Format Journal Article Trade Publication Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington International Monetary Fund 01.03.2012
Subjects
Boughton, James
Economic history
Global economy
Historians
History
International agencies
International organizations
Officials and employees
Reserve assets
Special drawing rights
Washington, D.C
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Summary:In an interview, IMF historian James Boughton talked about his book, Tearing Down Walls: The International Monetary Fund 1990-1999, and his years as the IMF's official chronicler. The title is meant to evoke several things that happened in the 1990s. The first major event was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. That created 15 new countries. These were all countries that had little or no experience with market economics, and the IMF was called upon to help these countries in that transition. The other thing that happened was a devastating series of financial crises that started with the Mexican peso crisis that hit in December 1994, continued across east Asia in Thailand, Indonesia, and Korea, and spread to Russia in 1998 and really affected the whole world economy in a major way. Meanwhile, he said that the IMF has a historian because the management of the Fund realized that nobody outside the building had any idea what was going on here.
ISSN:0145-1707
0015-1947
1564-5142