Geez, these guys aren't serious.
Please can we stop listening to the IMF now? Their free market fundamentalism is the main reason the world (as opposed to just the United States) finds itself in this huge mess.
For those keeping score, here are their recommendations:
• A temporary government guarantee of liabilities.
• Recognize losses.
• Provide government capital.
• Promote a cooperative approach.
None of these measures are revolutionary or even that interesting. They may have done something to stem the tide of frozen credit and banks going belly up had they been implemented a few months ago. But as Jerome others have been eloquently arguing, it's going to take some far more serious moves - think wholesale nationalization of the banking sector or the recreation of a Bretton Woods Systemincluding limiting capital movement through a transaction tax - to help us out of the situation we're in now. In other words, the exact opposite of the structural adjustment programs (pdf) the IMF has been peddling for the last 30 years.
I can't believe the audacity of these folks ignoring their own culpability in this crisis and then providing pseudo-solutions. Oh wait, I've been living in the same city as George Bush for the past eight years. Maybe I can believe it.