FMI et la fonction "Prêteur-Last Resort" (document en anglais)

issue is whether and how this function can be

adapted to the international environment. Making the rele-vant decisions is no easy task, however, because of all the

functions a central bank may carry out, serving as the lender

of last resort is by far the most difficult to pin down. For one

thing, the desirability and appropriate contours of the func-tion cannot be identified independently of the monetary pol-icy framework. Suppose bank deposits were not defined in

nominal terms, much like mutual fund shares, or that mone-tary policy could be run in a purely discretionary manner

without raising credibility problems. Would a lender of last

resort still be needed? Many would doubt it, to say the least.

But there is more. Intervention by a lender of last resort

amounts to a suspension of market discipline, since it means

lending in situations where other lenders are not. Hence, the

very existence of a lender of last resort raises a potential

moral hazard problem, which can be kept within acceptable

limits only by relying on the broader legal and institutional

setup—on regulation in the broadest sense of the word. In

short, what the Tao Teh Ching says of the wheel could equally

well be said of the lender-of-last-resort function: for all its

complexity, what makes it work lies outside of it. Therefore, if

we are to understand how a lender of last resort can address

financial instability at the national level, as well as whether

the notion of an international lender of last resort makes any

sense, we must first look beyond the function’s boundaries.

Evolution of concept

When Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth-century economist

whose Lombard Streetis still the classic in this field, was writ-ing, the monetary framework was pretty rigid. It was based

on the gold standard and on severe restrictions on the supply

of currency, while the world’s main financial center, the City

of London, was run by a handful of financial institutions in

a clublike fashion. This helps explain the Bagehot doctrine:

when things turn bad, first expel the rotten apple from the

club (that is, let it go broke), then come to the rescue of the

club as a whole by lending freely to all who can supply good

collateral and can afford to pay a penalty rate.

The IMF and the

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