Aurélie Trouvé: What I would do as head of the IMF

Today is the deadline for nominations in the race for the IMF leadership, and I have put forward a radically alternative candidate to do the job: me.

I am a French economics lecturer and have been the co-chair of the association Attac, an international organisation and network in the global justice movement, for four years. Attac is present in more than 40 countries worldwide, and has tens of thousands of adherents. Founded in France in 1998 by dozens of other associations, unions and alternative media, it has been a mainstay of the construction of the World Social Forum. We are a popular education movement that is action-oriented, and we denounce the mechanisms of neoliberalism while proposing tangible alternatives to both disarm the big world of finances and build an economy at the service of wealth-sharing and the preservation of our planet.

My leadership challeng aims to expose the current and past policies of the IMF, which are to unconditionally defend the interests of the creditors of indebted states while imposing brutal plans of social austerity (look at the state of Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia in 2008, Iceland in 2009, and Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in 2010). Since the devastation brought by the financial crisis in 2008, neither the G20 nor the IMF or other international institutions have taken any steps to significantly reduce the volatility of international financial markets. Speculation is now raging, both on commodities and the securities of public debts.

With the above with mind, here are five crucial steps to tackle the crisis which I would put forward, should I become head of the IMF:

• I would put a stop to all austerity plans, and establish a tax on financial transactions, as well as implementing a strict regulation of transactions on derivatives products.

• I would put forward the co-ordination of economic policies at the international level, bringing countries with excessive imbalances (China, Germany, Japan on the side of those with a surplus, and the US on the side of countries with a deficit) to rebalance themselves in a co-ordinated manner, through adjustments in exchange rates coupled with active fiscal and wage policies.

• I would push for the development of an international currency based on a basket of the major currencies, as an alternative to the dollar.

• I would guarantee special drawing rights (an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement its member countries’ official reserves) to help countries in difficulty during the period leading to the reduction of global imbalances, or during unexpected economic shocks.

• I would work towards democratising the IMF by integrating it to the UN system, with one vote for each of the 187 IMF member countries. It is about time to put an end to the exclusive ruling power of the biggest economies.