PROTECTION AND WEALTH BUILDING STRATEGIES 235It prints money like most central banks, but this world mon-
ey has the opaque name of special drawing right, or SDR. It has
a convoluted governance structure in which the highest deci-
sion-making body, the Board of Governors, has little power, be-
cause the votes are weighted in favor of the largest economies,
such as the U.S. Actual power rests with the blandly named
International Monetary and Finance Committee, the IMFC.
Everything about the IMF is designed to make it difficult
for outsiders like you to have any idea what is going on. The
insiders like that arrangement just fine.
Given this culture and history, it was surprising to see the
recent publication of a book by Liaquat Ahamed, Money and
Tough Love — On Tour With the IMF. The book is the most de-
tailed account yet from behind the scenes at IMF headquarters.
The author also reports on an IMF annual meeting in Tokyo
and goes on the road with IMF “missions” as they monitor large
and small governments around the world. These missions are
the key to forcing governments to conform to the “rules of the
game” as established by the global monetary elites.
Ahamed had difficulty getting the cooperation of the IMF
and access to IMF meetings and missions he needed to write
the book. In the opening section, he writes, I soon discovered
that gaining access to the world behind its doors would not
be easy. The fund is the repository of many secrets, which it
guards ferociously. It does its work behind the scenes, out of
the public eye, and has a history of being wary of the press...
The Fund benefited from a certain mystique that could be lost
by too much openness.
In the end, Ahamed was granted access by IMF Managing
Director Christine Lagarde. What follows is a revealing account
that is part history, part economics and part James Bond as
Ahamed travels from Washington to Tokyo, Dublin and Maputo,
Mozambique. He describes IMF interactions with other mem-
bers of the global power elite as well as the IMF’s member