Tag Archive for: IMF

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks during a session with Melinda Gates (unseen), co-founder of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, at the "Advancing Asia: Investing for the Future" conference in New Delhi, India, March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks during a session with Melinda Gates (unseen), co-founder of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, at the “Advancing Asia: Investing for the Future” conference in New Delhi, India, March 12, 2016.

HAVANA, March 13 (REUTERS) Cuba has not yet made a request for membership of the International Monetary Fund, the fund’s chief said on Sunday, adding such a request would be considered in accordance with its rules.

Christine Lagarde’s comments came just days after the European Union and Cuba signed an agreement in Havana to establish normal relations, bringing the Communist-run island further into the international fold and paving the way for full economic cooperation with the 28-member bloc.

Cuba was one of the founding members of the IMF until it quit in 1964.

“We have not received a request by the authorities of Cuba to be included as a member,” Lagarde told reporters at the end of a conference in New Delhi.

U.S. President Barack Obama is due to visit Cuba this month as ties rapidly warm thaw since a 2014 detente with Washington.

 Not a bad gig for a former I.M.F. president haunted by a lurid sex trial! 

HAVANA,  July  16  (BY TINA NGUYEN)  It’s not easy these days for former International Monetary Fund president Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Sure, he was acquitted of aggravated pimping charges, and settled a sexual-assault case filed by a New York hotel maid in 2012, but now, it’s nearly impossible to talk about the formerly powerful economist without mentioning the words “acquitted of aggravated pimping charges.”

(Nor can one forget aboutall those comments he made during his trial.) But a man’s gotta make a living, and Strauss-Kahn is no exception: according to Politico, he’s now found some lucrative work consulting for foreign governments, like Cuba’s.

He apparently advises the Cuban government on building a new post-embargo business relationship with the United States. “The choice to advise Havana . . . comes after lucrative speechwriting gigs, a consulting job with the Serbian government and a failed business venture,” Politico notes, but adds that at least former Cuban president Fidel Castro shares somewhat similar sentiments with Strauss-Kahn on the situation in Greece: the retired applauded the recent referendum, which could have led to Greece abandoning the euro, as “courage” against “external aggression.”

Strauss-Kahn, who seemingly has no desire to rebuild his career in France after he was thrown under the bus by his political enemies, now files his taxes in Morocco, and spends his time throwing shade at the current I.M.F. head for how they’ve handled the current Greek debt crisis. (He structured its first bailout in 2010, but to his credit, recentlyacknowledged that he “misdiagnosed the Greek problem,” seeing as the country is now on bailout number three.)

Though it seems as if D.S.K. will likely spend his days traipsing around warm countries and bringing their former communist economic structures into the 21st century, a French comeback could still happen: French political advisers told Politico that D.S.K. could take a behind-the-scene role during the upcoming elections, practicing the hidden arts of political consultancy.

He could also just bask in the fact that he’s more popular than current French president François Hollande, which isn’t too shabby for a man permanently shackled to the phrase “acquitted of aggravated pimping charges.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/dominique-strauss-kahn-consulting-cuban-government