This is part of a series, “Economists Exchange”, featuring conversations between top FT commentators and leading economists about recovery from the economic impact of coronavirus
The IMF is a creature of crisis. It was founded to stabilise global capital flows in the postwar economy. Whenever people have been tempted to write it off as having its best days behind it, a new crisis has come along to bring it back to centre stage as the world’s only permanent financial firefighter.
So there could be no better time for a conversation with Gita Gopinath, the fund’s chief economist. The global economy is in the grip of at least three interlocking crises. The coronavirus pandemic, with its enormous economic fallout, is of course the acute present emergency. But it comes on top of a creeping malaise of slowing growth, rising inequality and popular economic resentment that has fuelled explosive politics in many countries. Looking into the future, the crisis of devastating climate…