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There is no doubt in my mind. This week in Washington I saw the most impressive performance of a financial policymaker since the crash began in 2007.
Infact I saw perhaps the most coherent articulation of global financial institutional reform since the post World War II Bretton Woods settlement.
Christine Lagarde's speech at the Brookings Institute was standing room only. I knew it would be so arrived extra early to get a seat and fight my way through the media scrum.
There are few people in financial policy who speak with candour and clarity. Largarde does so with her usual panache and only dodged one question on the upcoming French presidential poll. Fair enough.
She wanted the headlines from her speech to be about her call for the world's finance ministers at next week's annual IMF Spring Meeting to move decisively to strengthen the institution to get ahead of the crisis once and for all and to ensure sustainable and evenly distributed growth across the globe.
But this is no hagiography. While French finance minister she might have been more candid with her president to take the steps necessary to reform France's economy.
But, in this role, I believe Lagarde has been an inspired choice to take the big seat at the IMF. Rather than paying lip service to reforming the IMF to reflect the realities of the new global economic order - she has moved ahead appointed Chinese candidates into top roles.
She rightly used her speech to roundly condemn the continued lack of co-ordination around global financial reform from policymakers and regulators that continues to hold back growth opportunities. "The mission is yet to be accomplished" she said and she is so right.
But her compelling narrative for me is not one of international collectivism. She argued constantly in her remarks for 'country specific' activities to bolster growth and rebalancing.
No - her big idea was to call for a 'Washington moment' - like the 'London moment' at the G20 in April 2009 which created co-ordinated action on financial reform but allowed space for the needs of the individual nation state.
That idea is no less relevant now than it was three years ago.
World financial leaders have, as she defined it, some 'breathing space' to step up the necessary fiscal, monetary and supranational regulatory reforms.
With her comments this week Lagarde showed that vision in spades. I just hope those around the table in DC next week can do the same.
But Lagarde is showing she is the right person for the job in hand.
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Very Impressive !
What about America ?
One thing she did not mention is the urgent need for Germany to reduce its trade surplus as a key to balancing the eurozone, though it is implied: "Clearly, the rebalancing of the global economy—a shift in demand from external deficit to surplus countries—is key and something that the IMF has been advocating for some time. It is even more important now."
As long as there is trade imbalance there will be monetary imbalance.
She's also a superb lawyer, so her thought process is very structured..Perfect for the job.
Since the most appropriate thing to do with him is refer him for charges of crimes against humanity at the hague, that ain't saying much.
The US will NOT pony up more cash to bail out europe. Get it?
It is time to mark the goals and attain them on a published five year basis into the next century. Global administered by Bretton Woods is a mistake. It needs to be continental with established authority like the new development bank of the BRICS. This can work and the developed world can help. (there needs to be a global money before globalism works and America will not go for that, and that is why we have the military empire)
My prediction: the euro reinvents itself with a tie to gold and pushes the dollar aside... someday.
Ms. Largarde's vison of policies "...to ensure sustainable and evenly distributed growth across the globe" are both naive and impractical. It may sound good in a speech. But it just can't happen.
The probability has to be vanishingly low. Global warming means that temperature rises by the next century will have massive effects. However China is building a new coal fired power station every week and India has an intense program for cola fired power stations.
If they can't agree over this what chance is their of agreement over financial regulation?
The Anglo-German conservative leaders devotion to austerity and cuts appears to be undermined at every opportunity. Perhaps the Greek election will tip the scales towards investing for growth.
Problem in Britain always is that investing for jobs is always aimed at the low paid doing pretty useless work. UK needs around £500 million a month of govt money put into joint ventures (Government taking 40%) downstream from the oil industry. We need two or three large refineries and a round a dozen petrochemical plants of various kinds. these would only create a few thousand jobs but they would supply the feed-stock for further manufacturing. But nothing like this ever happens. We treat our oil industry like we are a developing country without a skilled labour force or sophisticated infrastructure.