What is the International Monetary Fund for? It has reinvented itself once: its original role was guardian of the Bretton Woods system's fixed exchange rates. It will have to do so again.

The Fund's problems are partly that it is searching for a role and partly that it is searching for legitimacy. Those problems are connected. The Fund should be the lender of last resort in a crisis, and a trusted advisor bringing undoubted expertise and lessons learned across the globe. Yet those who might need to rely on it do not seem to trust it.