Laid Low
Inside the Crisis That Overwhelmed Europe and the IMF
Description
The latest book by journalist and author Paul Blustein to go behind the scenes at the highest levels of global economic policy making, Laid Low chronicles the International Monetary Fund’s role in the euro-zone crisis. Based on interviews with a wide range of participants and scrutiny of thousands of documents, the book tells how the IMF joined in bailouts that all too often piled debt atop debt and imposed excessively harsh conditions on crisis-stricken countries. As the author shows, IMF officials had grave misgivings about a number of these rescues, but went along at the insistence of powerful European policy makers — to the detriment of the Fund’s credibility, with disheartening implications for the management of future crises. The narrative ends with a tale of the clash between Greece’s radical Syriza government and the country’s creditor institutions that reached a dramatic climax in the summer of 2015.
Reviews
"Laid Low is an important addition to the burgeoning literature on the euro-area crisis. [It] goes some way towards puncturing the fiscal-and-sovereign-debt-only narrative of the euro-area crisis. His storytelling is highly engaging, and his reporting is
"Countless articles and books have analyzed the euro crisis, but until now, a serious treatment of the International Monetary Fund's role in the crisis has been missing. Media reports often portray the IMF as filled with neoliberal ideologues who enthusiastically helped EU institutions and leaders impose harsh austerity policies and debt-repayment terms on southern European countries. In this authoritative and detailed account, Blustein marshals impressive research to rebut this view." Foreign Affairs