Departing IMF economist attacks fund's leadership

A departing senior IMF economist has excoriated the fund, alleging it failed to address Europe's crisis and “suppressed” its challenges, according to a letter published yesterday.
In the letter obtained by CNN and reported by AFP, Peter Doyle also accused Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, of being “tainted” by a faulty selection process.
Doyle, in a resignation letter dated June 18 to the IMF executive board, expressed regret to have worked at the Washington-based global lender.
“After 20 years of service, I am ashamed to have had any association with the Fund at all,” he wrote to Shakour Shaalan, dean of the board.
Doyle said it was not just a matter of the fund's incompetence amid the global crisis and in surveillance ahead of the eurozone crisis, but because the institution deliberately had shirked its responsibilities.
“The substantive difficulties in these crises, as with others, were identified well in advance but were suppressed here,” he wrote.
“Timely sustained warnings were of the essence. So the failure of Fund to issue them is a failing of the first order,” he said.
That inaction has caused suffering for many, including Greece, and “the second global reserve currency (euro) is on the brink.”
The IMF has been “playing catch-up” in reactive responses in last-ditch efforts to save it, the economist charged.
Contacted by AFP for comment on the letter, IMF spokesman Bill Murray said: “We have no evidence his views were suppressed, nor any views were suppressed.”
Doyle accused the IMF of “European bias” which he said was becoming more deeply entrenched, despite reform commitments.