The biannual meetings of the world's leading financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are generally pretty staid affairs — after all, how riled up can gatherings of central bankers and finance officials really get? In recent years, the answer is "pretty much."
Then again, a global financial crisis that refuses to go away, overlaid with (and compounded by) complaints about how the global financial architecture is run, makes for a combustible mix.
At last month's meetings, IMF members agreed to raise at least another $430 billion, almost doubling its capacity, to lend in the event the global economy makes another downturn. Given recent developments in Europe, with Britain sliding into recession, Spain being battered by markets as it tries to roll over its debt and anemic growth in the United States and the Chinese economy slowing and looking shaky, that day may not be long in coming.