Without the US contribution of your tax dollars to the IMF it wouldn't exist. Giving up control to the Russians and Chinese makes no sense unless you think they are better stewards of our money as many on the left do.

IMF gives U.S. Congress year-end deadline for passing reforms

The 188 members of the International Monetary Fund on Sunday gave the U.S. Congress until the end of the year to pass reforms giving large emerging countries like Russia and China a greater say in the Bretton Woods Institution, after which they may make plans to reform the IMF without the U.S.

A communique from the IMF’s finance committee urged Congress to use the coming months to enact the reforms, which would also double the IMF’s permanent lending authority. Top IMF officials continued to say they expect the IMF legislation to pass this year because of growing support in Congress for modernizing the institution to reflect the evolving world economic order.

Nearly all the IMF’s other members have approved the reform legislation, but the U.S. is the IMF’s largest voting member and has blocked it from taking effect so far. But the communique made clear that the IMF will not tolerate a delay of the reforms, first negotiated in 2010, for much longer.

“If the 2010 reforms are not ratified by year-end, we will call on the IMF to build on its existing work and develop options for next steps and we will schedule a discussion of these options,” the communique said. “We are committed to maintaining a strong and adequately resourced IMF.”

Some prominent international experts and IMF sympathizers are urging the IMF to go on without the U.S., including Peterson Institute on International Economics luminaries C. Fred Bergsten and Edward Truman.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said last week the IMF is considering a “Plan B” for proceeding without the U.S., although she still hopes the U.S. Congress will act in time to prevent the institution from having to take such drastic measures.

“It is entirely possible that the United States is going to ratify the 2010 reforms in the course of the year,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister of Singapore, noting that he sees a greater consensus building in Congress for “a strong IMF in the face of what are very obvious challenges in the global economy and to the whole global order.”

But he added a warning that U.S. failure to adopt the reforms could undermine the IMF and the whole system of economic governance set up by the U.S. and its allies after World War II.

“If for some reason … the 2010 reforms are not completed, then we are more likely over time to see disruptive change,” he said. “We are more likely over time to see a weakening of multilateralism, the emergence of regionalism, bilateralism and other ways of dealing with global problems, and that will not be a better world for all of us, for the U.S., for members of the IMF. It is really a world that will be less safe.”