Coleman Church

But what I learned through these series of crises

is that what you have to kind of start with is the bazooka, to go with the Moab of bailout that you have to go with way more than the market thinks you need.

In the Mexi-Peso crisis, if my memory serves properly,

They kept coming with not half measures, but sort of just enough of what they thought would bring back market stability or market confidence.

And just enough creates a bit of spike in confidence and then starts to panic again and then come back again until finally they come back with the...

mega bazooka swap lines bailouts all that sort of stuff so now that was us early in sort of the washington consensus era of foreign policy and there was uh i guess my the macro point i would make or the conclusion i'm reaching is this is a huge feature of our foreign policy

It is.

And, you know, the IMF, it's funny, I've been, you mentioned Ukraine and the trip I went to Ukraine was an investor trip.

And part of the purpose of an investor trip is to go and to meet with their finance ministry, their debt liability people, meet with banks, meet with locals, etc.

get an assessment.

And, you know, you go to, you always go to the IMF there and ask what the likelihood is of the next tranche being delivered.

And, you know, perhaps it's a bit cynical, but 30 years of trade in merchant markets will make it pretty cynical.

But I'd always go into those meetings and walk away from those meetings like, well, what are we talking about here?

Of course they're going to disperse the next tranche.

That's what they're in the business of doing.

They're in the business of

lending money to these countries because that's what they do and that's where they make their money.

So it's very rare that they won't or they don't unless it's a real sort of turn your thumb up, turn your nose up or thumb your nose at the IMF and- Is the purpose of the IMF to bail out-

mismanaged countries i think it's simple terms yes i don't think that's the i don't think that's the most euphemistic way of putting it or how they describe it but effectively yes i'd say backstop or keep them keep them afloat and to offer them uh guidance as to how to run austerity programs and get themselves back on the rails so that they can move towards

prosperity democracy all this does it work uh typically no why uh because one uh it's very politically unpopular as a domestic politician to be taking orders from any foreign power but certainly uh the west and those orders come with