And Europe had a ballooning balance-of-payment problem with the United States.

ECONOMIST: The Marshall Plan

The IMF's mission was to give countries temporary short-term loans so they could put their economic houses in order, coping with temporary balance-of-payment problems without resorting to destructive tariffs or massive devaluations.

FORBES: Housing

Just as the Humphrey-Hawkins legislation in the 1970s put a new burden on the U.S. Federal Reserve, that of seeking full employment, so did Madame Lagarde appear to add a mission for the IMF, which was founded after World War II to help manage international capital flows to ward off balance-of-payment crises.

FORBES: Humphrey-Hawkins Meets the IMF

"At the root of the euro upheaval is a balance of payment crisis caused by the cumulative effects of a 13-year-old one-size-fits-all monetary policy and a fixed exchange rate for a collection of disparate countries in very different stages of economic and structural development, " he argues.

WSJ: Fiction of the EU Summit's Accepted 'Facts'