Why Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer will/won’t head the IMF

[oberliner]

Israeli central bank official Stanley Fischer is throwing his name into the pool of people being considered for the top spot at the International Monetary Fund, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Given the increasingly long list of prominent candidates—including French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde (who is widely supported in Europe) and Mexican Central Bank Governor Agustin Carstens (who may gain the support of the emerging markets bloc)—what are Fischer’s chances?

Fischer, 67, certainly has the academic and professional qualifications. A former deputy managing director of the IMF, he also served as the chief economist at the World Bank and a vice chairman of Citigroup. He was formerly a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management where he served as the thesis adviser to Ben Bernanke.

But if you take into account the politics of the selection process, Fischer’s chances may be much slimmer although, as the Wall Street Journal reported, he may have “an outside shot at the job if there is a deadlock in the voting.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/political-economy/post/why-israeli-central-banker-stanley-fischer-willwont-head-the-imf/2011/05/27/AGaLHiCH_blog.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Anyone other than the european candidate is a long shot.

By tradition this job goes to a european (western european). Despite the recent scandal, and despite pressure from new members, that is not likely to change.