‘Read Me’: Before Congress Gives the I.M.F. More Bailout Authority, It Should Consider Findings of Casey Asia Symposium

(Washington, D.C.): The William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy today
released its long-awaited Summary of a major symposium held
this past May in New York City
concerning “The Asian Financial Crisis: The Exception or the Rule?” This
event, in which
nearly two hundred past and present business leaders, senior government officials, diplomats and
journalists participated (see the attached List of Participants),
offered important insights into one
of the most challenging policy issues facing the Congress: Whether to grant the International
Monetary Fund additional resources with which to perform financial bail-outs in Asia, Russia and
perhaps China — and, if so, whether systemic reform of the Fund’s operations and lending policies
should be an absolute precondition.

The twelve-page Summary is replete with thoughtful — and thought-provoking — insights by
such
participants as Forbes Magazine editor-in-chief Steve Forbes, href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ former Deputy Treasury
Secretary R. T. “Tim” McNamar, former Associate Director of the Office of
Management and
Budget Lawrence Kudlow, former Senior Director of International Economic
Affairs at the
National Security Council Roger W. Robinson, Jr. and Wall Street
Journal editorial board
member John Fund.

Those involved in congressional deliberations on the Clinton request for a further $18 billion
for
the IMF will find particularly topical highlights of the Symposium involving: the causes
of the
present financial crisis; the IMF’s (and other multilateral organization’s) ability
to address
those ills; and the impact of the crisis on the security landscape.
With regard to the latter, a
most interesting discussion took place concerning the use being made by potentially unfriendly
national military establishments or other foreign government entities of financial instruments
issued in Western capital markets to underwrite their activities.

As it happens, the sentiments of many of the Casey Symposium’s participants are well
captured in
the attached op.ed. article by Mr. Forbes published in today’s
Washington Times. This essay,
entitled “Be Wary of Bailing Out the IMF” argues that Congress should not rubber-stamp
upcoming legislation to replenish IMF coffers lest it simply perpetuate that agency’s flawed
approach to fiscal and monetary reform. Mr. Forbes submits that — at a minimum — the Congress
must ask, and the IMF must answer, several basic questions about the Fund’s methodology,
including: “What is the money being used for? Are American taxpayers being asked to
bailout sophisticated lenders? Are we subsidizing disastrous policies that are beginning to
hurt even the mighty U.S.?”

The Summary may be obtained via the World Wide Web at
www.CenterforSecurityPolicy.org.

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1. For an edited version of the text of Mr. Forbes’ powerful address
concerning the need for
principled and robust American leadership in international affairs, see Casey
Symposium Shows
Need for Security-Minded Approach to Asian Financial Crisis and Other Global
Challenges
(No. 98-R 77, 5 May 1998).