Economix: Podcast: I.M.F., the Mortgage Crisis and the Dollar

Since it was founded in 1945, the International Monetary Fund has often played an important role in global finance. But it has rarely received as much news coverage as it has recently.

The recent burst of attention, of course, wasn’t the intention of the organization’s leadership. It came as a result of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who has resigned as I.M.F. managing director after being charged with sexually assaulting a maid at a Manhattan hotel. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a prominent political figure in France, had helped to arrange the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and with debt problems flaring up again in Europe, his problems have complicated matters.

But in a conversation in the Weekend Business podcast, Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent for The Times, says the I.M.F.’s deep executive ranks should be capable of keeping the organization operating smoothly for a while, until a permanent replacement has been named. In the meantime, John Lipsky, an American who had been Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s top deputy, is serving as acting managing director.

In a separate discussion on the podcast, David Gillen and Gretchen Morgenson discuss the subprime mortgage crisis, the subject of Ms. Morgenson’s new book, “Reckless Endangerment,” an adaptation of which appears on the cover of Sunday Business.

And I chat with Christina Romer, the Berkeley economist and former Obama administration adviser, who writes in the Economic View column in Sunday Business about what government officials would say if they could speak openly about the dollar. The official line is that the dollar is the purview of the Treasury, and that the government favors a strong dollar. The truth is that the dollar is subject to market forces, and that sometimes it is helpful if the dollar weakens.

You can find specific segments of the podcast at these junctures: Floyd Norris (28:46); news summary (19:36); Gretchen Morgenson (18:02); Christina Romer (9:38); the week ahead (1:51).

As articles discussed in the podcast are published during the weekend, links will be added to this posting.

You can download the program by subscribing from The New York Times’s podcast page or directly from iTunes.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=48d5509747440cdd7a44ec8fd0c14205