ABSTRACT
International organisations typically enjoy a lower degree of technical autonomy than comparable national institutions. International organisations deal with agents, i.e., national authorities, which are subject to domestic political constraints and agendas, and which, moreover, are largely responsible for the information on which any "objective" assessment of the need and desirability of emergency liquidity support. When a crisis erupts, the international community has a vested interest in avoiding social unrest, because states, like big financial intermediaries, often have a going-concern value that is positive even when their "market" value is nil. If the International Monetary Fund has enjoyed considerable autonomy in the first 50 years of its life, it is also thanks to the wisdom of its founders, who appropriately scaled down its tasks and ambitions, leaving in particular the lender-of-last-resort function out of the edifice. Providing emergency liquidity amounts to a suspension of market discipline, since it means lending in situations where no other lender in the market will.
