Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is a happy woman: her institution will receive at least an extra $430bn in resources. This will substantially increase the IMF’s capacity to help if the eurozone crisis takes a turn for the worse.
Should the world welcome this success? Yes, alas, with equal emphasis on both words. It is appalling that the eurozone should need such a backup. Yet it does. It is vital, however, that the IMF ensures that any support be well used. That means tough conditions for the eurozone as a whole.
In all this is an impressive gesture of international solidarity. It is also an indication of how worried outsiders must be over the ability of the eurozone’s crisis to shake the world and the inability of the eurozone alone to manage it.