So even Alastair Darling has turned against Gordon Brown for the IMF job. But what is disturbing about all the jockeying and jostling now going on is the focus on the wrong criteria. This is not a position – ‘the world’s banker’ – to be decided on the basis of personality incompatibilities (Cameron-Brown) or on whether the successor should be appointed from the same country (DSK-Lagarde) or whether the appointment should follow the switch of economic power to the East and South (Carstens-Manuel) or whether the Eurozone crisis should commend or disqualify an EU candidate for the job, or whether the IMF remains the fiefdom of the Europeans to balance the Americans at the World Bank. Continue reading →