ABSTRACT
Over recent years, there has been an intense debate on the reform of the international financial architecture. Several competing reform plans have been tabled. Some of these are “big ideas” requiring new, supranational institutions – or at least an adaptation of existing institutions. For example, in 1999 Stanley Fischer, then first Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, set out a blueprint for an International Lender of Last Resort, with the IMF at its centrepiece (Fischer 1999). In 2001, Anne Krueger (2001), newly-appointed first Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, set out an alternative plan for a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (SDRM), or surrogate international bankruptcy court. These big ideas would require far-reaching institutional and statutory change.
