This book was written in the relative calm between two global financial storms. I began the research for this project in 2001, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and shortly before Argentina's default on its $155 billion in external debt. As I finish writing, in the autumn of 2009, the world economy is beginning a slow recovery from the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. As the financial turmoil has deepened and spread across the globe over the last two years, the IMF, once again, has assumed a central role in efforts to restore and maintain international financial stability. As of November 2009 the Fund has provided more than $85 billion in credit to eighteen countries hit hardest by the crisis, including Belarus, Iceland, Hungary, Latvia, Pakistan, Romania, and Ukraine. In addition, the IMF has also committed an additional $80 billion to three countries (Colombia, Mexico, and Poland) under the terms of its new crisis prevention lending arrangement, the Flexible Credit Line.

This resurgence in IMF lending represents a sharp reversal from the start of the decade, when few emerging market countries borrowed from the Fund and many observers questioned the continued relevance of – and need for – the IMF in an apparently stable global economy awash in private international capital flows. In contrast, the focus today has shifted toward the urgent need to strengthen the Fund, in order to ensure that it has sufficient resources to meet its members' needs during the current crisis.