IMF is showing some hypocrisy on inequality

The IMF has long been criticised for tending to create the inequality it now claims to be tackling

“I hope people will listen now” said Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.

Lagarde was alluding to the wave of reactionary populism that’s currently sweeping the developed economies, and was harking back to her speech at Davos in 2013 when she warned that economic “inequality is corrosive to growth; it is corrosive to society”.

The IMF has been expressing public concern about inequality since 2010, but this has not translated