Taming the IMF: How the Asian Crisis Cracked the Washington Consensus: Nicola Bullard

Thanks to the Asian crisis, the IMF is no,v a household word. In Bangkok, bars offer exotic IMF cocktails, shaped like bOlllbs ,,,,ith a sparkling fuse while peasants in the Thailand's Northeast have added the 'IMF Era Man' to the panoply of demons to be exorcised during the annual rocket festival. In Korea ne\vspapers report IMF suicides, ,,,,hile in Malaysia they thank God that they don't have the IMF, because Mahathir in addition to the IMF would be just too much! IMF funding has, for the first tillle, becollle a topic of heated debate in the US Congress while, at the October 1998 "Vorld Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, there was a discernible unease: If you listened carefully you could almost hear the tectonic growl of the \Vashington (~onsensus shifting, heaving and cracking.