Peaks in disbursements bear witness to the crises that overtook various categories of member countries, their gravity increasing with the mobility of capital movements: first were the industrial countries, hit by the rise in oil prices of the 1970s; then came the emerging economies, which experienced foreign debt crises in the 1980s and, above all, disturbances to capital movements in the 1990s.
“Surveillance” has undergone more radical changes. Until the 1970s the Fund had been the “guardian” of an international monetary system featuring fixed but adjustable exchange rates and relatively minor movements of capital.