Word: witteveen
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...three-quarters of international loans are made in dollars, there is little doubt in financial circles that should it ever become necessary, saving the world's financial system will fall to the U.S. Federal Reserve. It is the only central bank *capable, in the words of H. Johannes Witteveen, the former managing director of the IMF, "of creating the necessary liquidity." In effect, the Federal Reserve would have to pump in the dollars that a troubled U.S. creditor bank needed to survive, even to the point where it could fuel inflation in the U.S. Says Salomon Brothers...
Hendrikus Johannes Witteveen, 56, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is the most enigmatic international civil servant since the days of Dag Hammarskjeid, the mystic who died in a plane crash while serving as Secretary-General of the United Nations. An economist by training, Witteveen always carries a pocket calculator, which he whips into action during esoteric discussions of international finance. A strict adherent of the obscure Sufi religious cult,* Witteveen, despite the intense pressures of his job, finds time to meditate every morning and evening. He sees no conflict between the practice of the dismal science...
...emergency meeting of 14 nations convened in Paris last week by the IMF, Witteveen, a thin, elegant figure who lives in Washington with his wife, spoke serenely to TIME about his economic philosophy and his religious convictions. Although he calls himself a liberal (he is a member of Holland's People's Party for Freedom and Democracy), and acknowledges an intellectual debt to Keynes, he nonetheless is a believer in the "market mechanism and the price mechanism...
...same time, Witteveen is anything but a passive administrator. He wants the IMF to provide more assistance and on tougher terms to economically troubled countries. He believes that fund members will approve some new articles that will enable him to police currency exchange rates. Even more ambitiously, he would like to see the IMF in role of a, world central bank...
...With such great responsibilities one could easily become very tense," says Witteveen, whose eclectic reading list covers the Bible, the Koran and the Inspector Maigret whodunit novels. But most of all he finds inner peace in meditation, "turning away from all that happened during the day." Witteveen's parents were both members of the Sufi movement. "I grew up with it. I began to study, and was very much touched and convinced. This is a deep and wide philosophy of life. An important part of it is mysticism." Appropriately among the ten articles of faith professed by a Sufi...