Word: witteveen
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Swelling Debt. But the industrial countries seemed more concerned by another challenge: the ballooning international debt. IMF Managing Director H. Johannes Witteveen said flatly that the time had come for all nations, rich and poor, to stop borrowing so much to cover their balance of payments deficits and start reducing their indebtedness...
Should the U.S., West Germany and Japan do more to help the global economy snap back faster from the recession? Emphatically yes, says H. Johannes Witteveen, the Dutch economist who is managing director of the International Monetary Fund. At the IMF's annual meeting of finance ministers in Washington last week, Witteveen suggested that the three leading industrial powers were all but dutybound to pursue more stimulative economic policies in order to "lead the world to recovery." Witteveen's argument drew prompt rebuttals from all three nations. Said U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon: "We believe we have taken...
...basic mechanism for crisis loan making will be an expansion of the IMF's present oil facility, organized last year by Managing Director Johannes Witteveen. The Europeans had advocated borrowing an additional $10 billion to $12 billion from the oil producers for the Witteveen facility this year; but to assuage the U.S., they agreed to add only $6 billion to the $1.2 billion presently in the fund. The Europeans also agreed that oil-import levels will no longer be the sole criterion for granting loans...
...Band-Aid. The Witteveen facility is intended to last only one year; in all likelihood, the parent IMF will begin making ordinary loans to oil consumers when the facility's funds are exhausted. By that time, however, the much bigger, $25 billion safety net designed by the U.S. to aid industrial nations should also be in operation. All 24 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are to participate in the plan. Each time a member nation is granted a loan, all the other members would assume a set percentage of the risk. The U.S. would...
Besides endorsing Witteveen II, originally drawn up by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, the Europeans have made known their dislike of the U.S. recycling plan: the $25 billion "safety net" proposed in November by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In contrast to the European plan, Kissinger's oil facility would keep the OPEC governments at a distance; it would not borrow directly from the oil producers, but would draw instead on the OPEC billions already deposited in the Western banking system. The money would come chiefly from the economically stronger countries, meaning, in practice...