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Finance: What is an International Money Fund (IMF)? 4 Views
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Description:
What is an International Money Fund (IMF)? Created as a result of the post WW II Bretton Woods agreement, the IMF was designed, in theory, to oversee and administer financial stability, promote economic growth through international trade facilitation, and finance economic assistance through government loans tied to policy reform guidelines. It has 189 member nations and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
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Transcript
- 00:00
Finance Allah Shmoop What is the International Monetary Fund or
- 00:06
the IMF or IMF If you're just thie goal of
- 00:11
the I M f is to stabilize the exchange of
- 00:14
trade among nations particularly you know the less politically stable
- 00:18
ones the smaller ones the emerging market ones the developing
Full Transcript
- 00:21
ones the Third World or whatever other politically correct name
- 00:25
for economically weak countries comes to mind So what actually
- 00:28
is the fund Well it was started in nineteen Forty
- 00:31
for as two was coming to a close And the
- 00:34
aftermath of the Great Depression which financially infected the world
- 00:38
was still on everyone's minds Countries wanted there to exist
- 00:42
some stabilizing force in their exchange of promissory paper I
- 00:46
bonds as they bought goods and services from each other
- 00:49
The scars of the nineteen thirties currency devaluations all around
- 00:53
the world were still a thing and everyone still had
- 00:55
this image of it Taking a wheel barrel of German
- 00:58
marks the German currency at the time to buy a
- 01:01
loaf of bread had crazy inflation from a bunch of
- 01:04
paper was worth but well you know that loaf had
- 01:07
really awesome raisins in it but still was a loaf
- 01:10
of bread Okay well think of the IMF and the
- 01:11
same vein as you would a market maker in a
- 01:14
stock that is a given exchange allows an investor to
- 01:17
make a market in say Amazon stock where at this
- 01:20
moment she's a buyer at fifteen Oh two in the
- 01:22
cellar at fifteen fourteen and she makes twelve dollars spread
- 01:26
on each share sold her only basic requirement While she
- 01:29
has to continue to make a market in good times
- 01:31
or bad with volatile spikes and moves in the stock
- 01:34
under any conditions she has toehold in inventory lots and
- 01:37
lots of shares of a M CNE in order to
- 01:40
make that market like just make it be liquid Well
- 01:43
that's basically how the I M F works But with
- 01:46
the inventory being the currencies in the countries in which
- 01:49
it eases trade but may load up on rubles one
- 01:53
day is it reduces exposure that the Chinese currency or
- 01:56
RMB then may add euros on other days while it's
- 01:59
reducing Zimbabwean dollars Yeah the short idea here is to
- 02:03
simply make sure that exchange rates and international payment systems
- 02:07
run smoothly Liquid Lee So today almost two hundred countries
- 02:10
participate in the dance hoping to stimulate the interaction of
- 02:13
trade among all nations And this makes sense generally right
- 02:17
Like if everyone has somethingto lose well then they probably
- 02:21
have less interest in doing things like Oh you know
- 02:24
kill each other And that whole stabilising of trade makes
- 02:26
for more predictable commerce more trustworthy ability to plan and
- 02:30
build and liquidity or trust in a credit system so
- 02:33
that countries can take on modest amounts of leverage with
- 02:36
credit terms making sales happen more easily all around the
- 02:39
world Yeah it's a good idea And going through the
- 02:42
IMF or trading through their system The world then has
- 02:44
much better financial surveillance as to how well or poorly
- 02:48
a given country is doing economically or at least commercially
- 02:52
like how well they're selling bananas or coffee beans or
- 02:55
oil or whatever they sell a big spike in banana
- 02:57
sales from India Well that's probably good But what does
- 03:00
it mean to the countries competing against India in selling
- 03:04
those bananas well through the IMF trading system The numbers
- 03:07
are easy to check and it looks as if sales
- 03:09
are for falling through the floor For India's competitors Well
- 03:12
then the IMF can sometimes step in and buy a
- 03:14
bunch of bananas you know because they have appeal and
- 03:17
find another buyer for them elsewhere And this is a
- 03:21
problem at times because well the worst managed countries the
- 03:24
most corrupt ones tend to get the most attention right
- 03:26
Corrupt governments You thinking Somalia Mexico Rwanda Yeah we're looking
- 03:30
at you guys or it's all about ludicrously unfair tax
- 03:34
policy to favor the rich high Greece were looking at
- 03:37
you or to favor the poor a Venezuela How'd that
- 03:40
huge leverage bed on oil prices going up work out
- 03:43
for you there Yeah none of those countries have done
- 03:45
well and the disciplined group of relatively wealthy countries have
- 03:49
had to step in at times and bail them out
- 03:52
with huge loans to stave off either civil war or
- 03:55
mass starvation or well you know just to stave off
- 03:58
war Typically the IMF watches and advises those who seem
- 04:02
to have their acts together And it lends money to
- 04:04
those who don't The five largest stakeholders in the IMF
- 04:07
are the US Japan France Germany and the U K
- 04:09
Hey China where are you We need you in here
- 04:12
Well the fund itself was capitalized are funded by initial
- 04:15
capital contributions a gazillion years ago And there are more
- 04:18
coming as more and more countries teeter on the edge
- 04:21
of a well full bankruptcy Yeah You know more countries
- 04:24
they're going to be coming in Aachen for a western 00:04:26.804 --> [endTime] dough
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