If the International Monetary Fund did not exist, we would not re-invent it. This is not because it is useless, but because today’s world lacks the courage and vision to create powerful multilateral institutions. That fact alone makes those we have inherited more valuable. Even so, they must be kept up-to-date. Otherwise, they risk suffering a lengthy senescence. This danger now threatens the Fund.

Three questions need to be addressed. First, how has the world changed since the 1944 conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where the Fund was created? Second, what (if anything) is its contemporary role? Third, what changes are needed if it is to play it? Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, addressed just these questions in a thought-provoking speech in New Delhi, on Monday.*