Yet Mr Ostry rightly emphasises that the bar for intervention should be high.

ECONOMIST: Free exchange

IMF's executive committee, as proposed by Sylvia Ostry, a former Canadian trade negotiator.

ECONOMIST: Free trade in peril

Such deflections are not necessarily bad, according to a new IMF discussion paper by Mr Ostry, Atish Ghosh and Mr Korinek.

ECONOMIST: Free exchange

Jonathan Ostry, an economist at the IMF, reckons there is a theoretical case for limiting capital inflows to prevent a surge in currencies above fair value.

ECONOMIST: Free exchange

As Jonathan Ostry, one of the paper's authors, points out, the fund now appreciates that fiscal retrenchment does little to restore confidence unless there is an underlying fiscal problem.

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