News Briefs

• Pages: 200

Page 200

Jaime Caruana to Leave IMF for BIS

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn announced in late November that Jaime Caruana, Financial Counsellor and Director of the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department (MCM), would leave the Fund in April 2009 to become General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Strauss-Kahn praised Caruana in the press statement, noting that he has been instrumental in strengthening the Fund's work on financial sector issues and on macro-financial linkages.

Until his departure, Caruana will continue to serve as Financial Counsellor but will relinquish his operational responsibilities as Director of MCM.

Spain's Near-Term Prospects Are Somber, IMF Says

Spain's near-term prospects are "somber and uncertain," according to a statement by an IMF mission team in Madrid for the country's annual assessment. "After 15 years of impressive growth led by a housing boom, a gradual correction of accumulated imbalances got under way," the statement said, noting that the global financial crisis has accelerated Spain's slowdown.

"The authorities' response has been forceful and earlier than European Union partners, with market-based banking policies and substantial fiscal measures," the IMF statement said.

"Embedding these short-run fiscal measures into a long-run consolidation plan could increase effectiveness and boost confidence."

But recovery in the medium term will also depend on the country's progress with implementing comprehensive structural reforms, the statement stressed, adding that, in absence of such reforms, "Spain could get stuck in a low-competitiveness, slow-growth, extended-deleveraging, and highunemployment equilibrium, from which returning to lower public debt would be difficult."

IMF Appoints New Human Resources Director

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has named Shirley Siegel as Director of the IMF's Human Resources Department.

From 2001 to 2007, Siegel was Assistant Deputy Minister in charge of Human Resources for the Canadian Department of National Defense, where she had responsibility for setting the human resource strategy for a civilian workforce of 24,000.

Siegel, a...