International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The IMF is the postwar institution charged with keeping the international monetary system stable — originally by managing a system of fixed exchange rates, and since the early 1970s by acting as a lender of last resort to countries in balance-of-payments crises, monitoring the health of national economies, and providing technical assistance on fiscal and monetary policy. Headquartered in Washington DC alongside its sister institution the World Bank, it is funded and governed through a quota system: each of its roughly 191 member countries contributes capital and receives voting power roughly proportional to the size of its economy, which means the largest economies, and the United States in particular, hold outsized formal influence over its decisions.

The IMF is best known publicly for its bailout programs — multibillion-dollar loans issued to countries facing currency or debt crises, conditional on the borrowing government adopting specific fiscal and structural reforms. That conditionality is also the single most persistent source of criticism leveled at the Fund: economists and the governments of borrowing countries alike have long argued that IMF-mandated austerity has, in specific well-documented cases, deepened the very recessions it was meant to resolve.