This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, this is Jamie Martin, and I'm the author of Is the IMF Fit for Purpose, which was published in 2022.

So I decided to write this article at a very worrying moment, just as we were emerging from the pandemic.

The war in Ukraine was raging, inflation was rising, and interest rates were on the way up. In the United States, where I'm based, though also in Europe,

there was heated debate about how bad this inflationary surge was, and alarm bells were ringing

about growing debt distress around the world. And this is a reason why we have international institutions

because their mandate is global. They represent countries all over the world, and their job ostensibly

is to promote financial stability everywhere. And this is above all the task of the International

Monetary Fund, or the IMF. So the question that animated my piece was whether the IMF was up to the

task of providing a global financial safety net for the 2020s and beyond. Could it offer a

lifeline to all the countries facing such severe economic pressures at the end of the pandemic?

In 2022, I felt despite despite or maybe because of so many

ongoing crises that there was a moment for real reconsideration of questions like these.

And there seemed to be some really meaningful efforts for reform then, and ones that appeared

to have some wind behind them.

Now, in 2025, I'm afraid to say that I'm quite a bit more pessimistic.

The urgency of developing a global financial safety net is undiminished.

Global debt distress is just as much, if not more, of an issue today.

One recent UN estimate showed that nearly 40% of the world's population

live in countries that spend more on servicing their debt than they do on education and health.

This is unsustainable, and it's only going to get worse as the climate crisis deepens.

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