IMF told to shape up or it will be shipped out!

Today the Finance minister P.Chidambaram took a dig at the IMF asking the world body to shape up or it will lose all credibility in today's world. As such the IMF has been asked to do a rethink on the way that its voting shares are divided amongst the member countries. This formula is out dated and does not give much importance to the emerging market economies like that of India,Brazil,Bangladesh or Srilanka. Most of the developing countries do not have much of a voice at the IMF and they want that to change. They feel that since the entire voting distribution is based on an old formula they want the IMF not to just redistribute the voting shares but also to come up with a new formula that is much more comprehensive and is able to truly reflect the picture of the world economy. As such the current formula does nothing like that and the developing countries want this to change. The Finance minister said that he is hopeful of a change in the way that the IMF is governed and that this change comes really soon, at least by spring 2008!

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The barter system!

I shall be covering this issue in detail later on. But for the moment, let me just say that these are the times when this system could well make a comeback of sorts. With the kind of high prices that we have to pay for even the most simplest of services, I am sure that there are many of you who are feeling quite short changed by the whole transaction. And what's more,even after the purchase, it will be a rarity if whatever we had bought ever lives up to the amount that we had paid for that item. At least, with the Barter system, what you saw was what you got!