Last week Raghu Rajan and I coauthored an article for the Financial Times. We argued that the IMF should no longer continue the tradition that the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund be a European. Instead, it should “break the mould by appointing the best possible candidate to the job, regardless of nationality,” and “hold an open competition” for the position.

As the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance (on which we served) recommended, the IMF’s role needs to change to meet the requirements of a different word than existed in the year of its founding 75 years ago.

On this the 75th anniversary of the founding of the IMF and the World Bank, we need to recommit recommit to the spirit of Bretton Woods.  Indeed, this was the main message of the contributors (including me) to the recent book Revitalizing the Spirit of Bretton Woods, @75 Compendium 2019.

But this is no longer a task for Europe and the US alone, or for the G7 alone, or for the G20 alone.  The economic ideas being debated are much the same, as I explained in this Truman Medal Lecture, but keeping the flame of open international trade and open capital market alive is harder than ever. It is a now fully global, multi-polar world. It is a task for all the members of the IMF. The choice of managing director should reflect that reality.