Mme Lagarde goes to Washington

“Her first couple of months have been reassuring for those who feared the appointment of a European from a eurozone economy at a time of crisis,” says Simon Tilford, the chief economist of the Centre for European Reform, a London research group that supports European integration. “She recognizes that the IMF has to distance itself from the eurozone policy elite and its strategy for the crisis, which is clearly not working. ... In that sense, she’s culpable ... By backing the strategy of fiscal austerity, she has helped push some economies that were in a bad situation over the edge, and caused a profound loss of confidence that has pushed the crisis into the core of the eurozone.”