IMF Reform and Isolationism in Congress

"A long-awaited reform of the International Monetary Fund has now been carelessly blocked by the US Congress.   This decision is just the latest in a series of self-inflicted blows since the turn of the century that have needlessly undermined the claim of the United States to global leadership. 

The IMF reform would have been an important step in updating the allocations of quotas among member countries.  From the negative congressional reaction, one might infer that the US was being asked either to contribute more money or to give up some voting power.   (Quotas allocations in the IMF determine both monetary contributions of the member states and their voting power.)  But one would then be wrong.  The agreement among the IMF members had been to allocate greater shares to China, India, Brazil and other Emerging Market countries, coming largely at the expense of European countries.  The United States was neither to pay a higher budget share nor to lose its voting weight, which has always given it a unique veto power in the institution.

The change in IMF quotas is a partial and overdue adjustment in response to the rising economic weight of the newcomers and the outdated dominance of Europe.   Voting share in the IMF is supposed to be in proportion to economic weight, not equal per capita or per country.  This acknowledgement of reality, the principle of matching the representation to the taxation, is sometimes known as the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold, rules.”  The principle is probably one of the reasons why the IMF has usually been a more effective organization than others such as the UN General Assembly..."

at http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2014/01/29/imf-reform-and-isolationism-in-congress/