The crisis-like developments in East Asia, Russia and Latin America may have their characteristic features in individual cases. However, they also give rise to a number of comments of a more general nature. Imbalances in economic development, weak financial systems and insufficient supervision of financial markets are merely symptoms of deeper-lying causes. In any case, most recent experiences tend to confirm the opinion that a sustained economic development is only possible on the basis of social coherence. Individual countries themselves bear the responsibility for creating this stability. In the long run, outside help can only be meaningful if it is granted as help towards self-help. These remarks are equally relevant for assessing the activity of the International Monetary Fund. The chief task of this important institution in the area of international monetary policy is advising its 3  BIS Review 106/1999  members in the conduct of economic policy. This is designed to create favourable preconditions for a positive development of international monetary relations and, of course, also the world economy. The second task is to provide credit facilities in order to support the necessary processes of adjustment. Since its inception, the International Monetary Fund has thus held an intermediate position between emphasising the self-responsibility of a country and granting adjustment aid. Its task is not made any easier by the fact that it has no possibility of enforcing recommendations. Whenever difficulties arise in shaping international monetary relations, a call is made for introducing fundamental reforms.
The advantages arising from coordination between both policies would suggest assigning the central bank with a pivotal role in the pursuit of macro-prudential policies. This has been the path followed to date in most cases. Thus, for instance, in the United Kingdom a sister committee has been set up within the Bank of England and alongside the Monetary Policy Committee, namely the Financial Policy Committee. Italy, Belgium and Ireland have followed similar arrangements. In other countries such as France and Germany, committees have been set up with the participation of other economic authorities, but the central bank plays a very important role in them, and actually wields veto powers over the decisions of the macroprudential body relating to or affecting the field of competence of the national central bank or of the Eurosystem. Nonetheless, concentrating different and occasionally conflicting economic policy objectives within a single institution no doubt makes accountability more complicated and may make the institution’s mandate more ambiguous. This is indeed one of the reasons why in other instances, such as the United States, the option chosen was to create institutions in which  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  responsibilities are distributed more symmetrically between the central bank and the other economic authorities. This is no doubt a complex debate with unquestionable political connotations.