IMF Economist Resigns, Cites Conflict of Interests, Says: “Ashamed to Have Had Any Association with the Fund at all”

Brewing trouble at the IMF.

A renegade IMF economist recently resigned out of alleged conflict of interests. The Wall Street Journal Blog reports,

A senior International Monetary Fund economist is resigning from the Fund, writing a scathing letter to the board blaming management for suppressing staff warnings about the financial crisis and a pro-European bias that he says has exacerbated the euro-zone debt crisis.

“The failure of the fund to issue [warnings] is a failing of the first order, even if such warnings may not have been heeded,” Peter Doyle said in a letter dated June 18 and copied to senior management.

Doyle is formerly a division chief in the IMF’s European Department responsible for non-crisis countries. He currently acts as an adviser to the Fund but is expected to officially leave in the fall.

“The consequences include suffering [and risk of worse to come] for many including Greece, that the second global reserve currency is on the brink, and that the Fund for the past two years has been playing catch-up and reactive roles in the last-ditch efforts to save it,” he said in the letter.

Mr. Doyle’s shift in positions at the fund–from division chief to adviser–occurred around the same time that a new European Department chief was appointed. A senior official at the IMF said the new chief restructured the department, replacing many of its staff from outside the department earlier.

“After twenty years of service, I am ashamed to have had any association with the Fund at all,” he said in the letter. Mr. Doyle wasn’t immediately available for further comment.

IMF is funded by taxpayers from different member nations thus, like all other multilateral agencies, the IMF is a political institution subject to the advancement of the political interests of major contributors (represented through the quota-voting system).

Such distribution of power can already be seen from the appointment of executive directors. From the IMF,

Five Executive Directors are appointed by the member countries holding the five largest quotas (currently the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom), and 19 are elected by the remaining member countries. Under reforms currently being finalized, all 24 Directors will be elected by the member countries, starting in 2012.

As a political institution, one really cannot expect the IMF to become apolitical and dispense their role in an objective manner, no matter the stated mission or job goals.

This also demonstrates of the web of complicity of the global cartelized tripartite political institutions of the welfare-warfare state, the privileged banking class and central banks whose interests has been promoted or upheld through all the political multilateral agencies.

And the uneven political representations in the IMF adds to the many reasons why bailouts or the redistribution of resources from poor nations (like Philippines) to the crisis stricken rich bankers and political class (whom fall under the umbrella of political interests of the major IMF fund contributors) has not only been financially unviable but immoral.