国际货币基金组织—拉加德的改变(1)

For the purposes of decision-making, the IMF's 189 member countries are divided into 24 constituencies of peculiar shapes and sizes. Ghana, for example, belongs to the same group as Afghanistan. Ecuador sits with East Timor

But in choosing the next boss after Christine Lagarde moves to the European Central Bank in October, the most decisive constituency may be a different group entirely: the New Hanseatic League.

This includes eight small, northern members of the European Union (EU) with bad weather and good credit ratings. They lost out in the fight for big EU jobs earlier this month. In compensation they may have a large say in Europe's pick to lead the fund.

That could be good news for Mark Carney, the charismatic and credentialled boss of the Bank of England. As well as Canadian and British citizenship, he holds a passport from Ireland, one of the new Hanseatics.

If Ireland champions his cause in the league, and the league backs him within the union, he would be hard to resist within the fund. By convention the IMF is led by whichever European candidate the Americans can live with.

And the Americans are unlikely to object to him, especially after the Europeans dutifully supported Washington's choice to run the World Bank earlier this year.

What about an Asian rival? One obvious candidate is Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a former finance minister and deputy prime minister of Singapore, who also chairs its monetary authority.

As well as a background in economics, he has the virtue of hailing from a small country that is neither improvident nor imperious- the kind of country that would be a member of Asia's Hanseatic league if it had one.

But even in a fair race he would struggle to beat Mr Carney, who has run two of the world's biggest central banks. And given the horse-trading between Europe and America, the IMF race will not be entirely fair.

Why, then, bother entering? Candidates from outside Europe face a Catch-22: anyone credible enough to win an unrigged race will not be crazy enough to enter a rigged one.