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The latest book by journalist and author Paul Blustein to go behind the scenes at the highest levels of global economic policy making, Laid Low chronicles the International Monetary Fund’s role in the euro-zone crisis. Based on interviews with a wide range of participants and scrutiny of thousands of documents, the book tells how the IMF joined in bailouts that all too often piled debt atop debt and imposed excessively harsh conditions on crisis-stricken countries. As the author shows, IMF officials had grave misgivings about a number of these rescues, but went along at the insistence of powerful European policy makers - to the detriment of the Fund’s credibility, with disheartening implications for the management of future crises. The narrative ends with a tale of the clash between Greece’s radical Syriza government and the country’s creditor institutions that reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 2015.
Acronyms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
1 An Arresting Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 A Saga Worthy of Broad Public Concern . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3 Existential Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4 Egg on Many Illustrious Faces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5 Striking the Faustian Bargain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6 A Different Episode at a Different Sofitel . . . . . . . . . . . 105
7 “There Is No Plan B” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8 Chastity and Continence, But Not Yet . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
9 Offers That Ireland Couldn’t Refuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
10 Hypocrisy and Tortured Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
11 The Light Dusting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
12 A Deal Is Not a Deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
13 Summit Follies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
14 The Barber’s Shears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
15 Breaking the Vicious Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
16 Getting Mojo Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
17 Making Numbers Add Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
18 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Syriza? . . . . . . . . . . 391
19 A Taste of Grexit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
20 Time to Rectify Travesty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Name Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Description
The latest book by journalist and author Paul Blustein to go behind the scenes at the highest levels of global economic policy making, Laid Low chronicles the International Monetary Fund’s role in the euro-zone crisis. Based on interviews with a wide range of participants and scrutiny of thousands of documents, the book tells how the IMF joined in bailouts that all too often piled debt atop debt and imposed excessively harsh conditions on crisis-stricken countries. As the author shows, IMF officials had grave misgivings about a number of these rescues, but went along at the insistence of powerful European policy makers - to the detriment of the Fund’s credibility, with disheartening implications for the management of future crises. The narrative ends with a tale of the clash between Greece’s radical Syriza government and the country’s creditor institutions that reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 2015.
