REPLACING MR CAMDESSUS

Michel Camdessus has a right to feel worn out. Being managing-director of the International Monetary Fund is a difficult job. It will not become any easier for his successor. There have been huge changes in the role of the IMF over Mr Camdessus' 13-year tenure. One is that IMF operations focus on developing countries and countries in transition. Another is the opening of capital markets, which has transformed the crises it deals with. These two changes in the demand for its services and in the world it oversees have also dramatically altered the political pressures upon the IMF. It now has to coordinate increasingly closely with the World Bank. It is also confronted with the need to involve the private sector in the management of financial crises, balancing the private sector demand for bail-outs against the legitimate public sector pressure for bailing private lenders in.