George Osborne’s application for IMF boss rejected

The new ‘old boys club’ was in overdrive when Boris Johnson used a phone call with the US president, Donald Trump, last month to recommend the former Tory chancellor George Osborne for the job of managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The vacancy at the Washington-based lender was created by the resignation of Christine Lagarde, who will move to Frankfurt to run the European Central Bank (ECB).

Osborne stepped down as MP for Tatton after being sacked as chancellor by Theresa May following the EU referendum in 2016 and accepting the editorship of the London-based Evening Standard.

However, the International Monetary Fund announced yesterday that Bulgarian national Kristalina Georgieva will become its new managing director, effective October 1.

Georgieva replaces Christine Lagarde, who left the international organization to become head of the European Central Bank. She will be only the second woman to serve in the IMF’s top job and the first from an emerging economy.

The IMF, which has 189 member countries, is a forum for global cooperation on exchange rates, trade and financial stability. It also provides aid to help prevent economic crises, as well as financing for development projects, with a total of $1 trillion in available funding.

Georgieva was previously the European commissioner in charge of the EU budget before she left at the end of 2016 to become CEO of the World Bank in January 2017, a job she has held since. She served for three months as the World Bank‘s interim president before David Malpass, a former top U.S. Treasury official, took over the global financial institution in April.

In her new role, Georgieva will chair the IMF’s executive board and oversee four deputies, as well as a staff of about 2,700 people.

Goerge Osborne never made it beyond the first application stage and was not considered for the role at all. As the architect of austerity, Osborne remains a highly divisive figure whose policies ended up disfiguring society, crushing national and community-based institutions with the end result being that millions needlessly suffered.

 

 

 

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