For these countries Mr Ghosh and his co-authors advocate debt restructuring in advance of monetary easing. (The IMF has also recommended a swift entry to the euro.) But otherwise, their macroeconomic prescriptions are very IMF 1.0: if a parity is to be defended, high rates will be needed.

ECONOMIST: Has the IMF changed? Or has the world?

Although the IMF says it is budgetary concerns which led it to delay giving Argentina the cash it was hoping for, some economists suspect that the IMF now believes that Argentina's currency board, which enshrines the fixed-parity link between the peso and the dollar in law, has become unsustainable.

ECONOMIST: Struggling on | The

Properly done Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjustments are very complicated, but if we judge by 2011 IMF figures than roughly speaking we should boost the nominal value of Russian wages by about 28% to capture their actual purchasing power.

FORBES: What is the Russian Middle Class? Probably Not What You Think