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The IMF. The international organization that attempts to encourage international monetary cooperation, as well as achieving greater financial stability, facilitating international trade, increase world employment levels and sustainable economic growth while always trying to reduce world poverty. They also play an important role in bailouts and the IMF is one of the members of the troika.

This organization was founded in 1945. It works in 188 member countries (the vast majority of the world´s nations), being its current managing director Christine Lagarde. The fund was started with the idea of establishing an international economic cooperation framework. It could therefore be possible to avoid repeating certain vicious cycles that have occurred and that can worsen economic depressions.

The IMF´s success in achieving this goal is debatable. The main objective of the IMF is to ensure the stability of the international monetary system. The world can therefore achieve sustainable economic growth. Its way to do this is by giving temporary financial resources to those countries with problems in its balance of payment, which have automatic access to 25% of this total, although they may negotiate higher amounts.

The amortization of the loan usually varies between three to five years, although there have been cases where it prolonged up to fifteen years. It is of great importance that the amount lent is returned as quickly as possible, this way it will not restrict the amount of other possible loans that other countries may need.

However, the IMF has recently said that loans to Greece or Ireland do not need to be repaid quickly if by doing this it will hurt their economic recovery. The IMF is also in charge of supervising if countries are stimulating their economies enough, if they are restructuring their regulatory systems, and warning about possible financial problems.