Financial Times
May 17, 2011
The sight of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and prospective candidate for the French presidency, doing the “perp walk” was stupefying. If the charges are true, this capable man is a lunatic. But, unless the case collapses, the event will cast a long shadow.
Mr Strauss-Kahn turned out to be the right man in the right job at the right time. Initially, I had my doubts about the appointment of yet another Frenchman and a politician, at that, to run such a central international institution. I was wrong. Mr Strauss-Kahn proved to be a bold decision-maker, an effective politician and a competent economist. This combination is very rare. None of the candidates under discussion is likely to do the job as well as he did during the worst of the global and then eurozone financial crises.
Of course, it was widely expected that Mr Strauss-Kahn would shortly depart from the IMF, to run for the French presidency. But if he had won, he might have transformed the eurozone’s ability to manage its current internal crisis. Certainly, he would have brought to this task abilities the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, lacks: above all, intellectual weight and so credibility with policymakers in Germany, Europe’s premier power.
Mr Strauss-Kahn was among the very few senior European policymakers to whom the German leadership, particularly Angela Merkel, the chancellor, paid attention. At crucial moments, he was able to bring Europeans together. Indeed, he even seemed able to bring a divided German government together. I cannot imagine who could replace him. When there exist so many divisions within Europe and the decisions ahead are so complex and fraught, his absence will be keenly felt.
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