Name: The Pursuit of Global Economic Security
Uploaded: 2025-10-16
Duration: 20 min 43 s
Description: It’s been said Kristalina Georgieva can make or break a nation’s finances. As head of the International Monetary Fund, she is leading the 191-member organization through a turbulent era. From tariffs and geopolitics to inflation and uncertainty, Georgieva joins us to discuss how the IMF navigates times of crisis and fundamental shifts in the world economy.

It’s been said Kristalina Georgieva can make or break a nation’s finances. As head of the International Monetary Fund, she is leading the 191-member organization through a turbulent era. From tariffs and geopolitics to inflation and uncertainty, Georgieva joins us to discuss how the IMF navigates times of crisis and fundamental shifts in the world economy.  

The Pursuit of Global Economic Security

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Managing director at Geva, I have to say that you said good music walking on. It makes me wonder, do you have a favorite walk-on song for IMF meetings? Yes, I do. Oh, really? What is it? We will, we will. OK, I think that sets the tone right there. This must be the most wonderful time of the year for you. You've got the annual meeting of the World Bank, IMF. You've got 191 member countries coming in. Give us a sense. This is day one. Thank you for joining us. Um, what have you been hearing so far? Give us a bit of a highlight. Well, the world is in a Very interesting place. Uh, so what I hear is mostly questions. Hey, how is it going to be? What would the world economy look like? Are we going to survive the trade war? And what about my country? What advice do you have for us? I actually started the day with The delegation of Tajikistan. Tiny country in Central Asia. Used to be a basket case. They had the Civil War. And then they lucked with leadership. I was delighted to have them as my first meeting because their growth is strong. Inflation is Below 3%. Their public debt is coming down, uh, and how are they doing that? Strong fundamentals, they pay attention to their policies, strong institutions, and hey, the IMF is there for them. So my message to my membership. If you come here so we can see better through the fog of uncertainty lying over our heads together. And what I'm asking you is leave your trade wars, your cold wars, your hot wars outside of my room. You can why mothers should be in charge, right? Yes, we keep it outside. Keep it outside. Well, you talked about what's heartening, what's disheartening to you right now. Uh, what is most disheartening is the risk we face for many countries. To lose hope for converging with those that are better off. What we have experienced over the last years, shock upon shock, upon shock. has pushed the fate of many poor countries into a more desperate place. And why should we care? We should care for two reasons one, Because when part of the world is falling behind, that means more insecurity for you guys, those who have global companies, shrinking market, and 2, because it is morally wrong. You know, I'm struck you, you led the World Bank. You're now in your 2nd term, you know, at the IMF. These are two organizations that really grew out of Bretton Woods in a spirit of globalization. Let's start with how do you lead an organization of people that is devoted to globalization in this fragmented environment? Well, the IMF is devoted. To help countries do better for their people. It happens that a more integrated world economy works better for the majority of people, but not for all. And one thing we have been saying now for some time is pay attention to those who are left out or left behind. Uh, and if we don't, then we risk more trouble. But let me deliver two messages to you. The first one is that despite the fragmentation in the world economy, we are still seeing. Countries reaching out to each other. And if globally we have more difficulty then at the regional level, subregional level, we seek compensation. Gulf Cooperation Council, ASEAN regions countries are looking for ways in which they can trade more with each other. And second, frankly, this thing that trade is dead is completely overstated, um. Trade is like water. You put obstacle, it goes around it. What we are seeing, and this has been like this for thousands of years, um, when we came to assess where is the world economy these days, we look at what is happening with trade and actually the impact of trade tensions is more muted for three reasons. One, Because the tariffs that were announced in the United States in April that shocked the world at that time 23%, now nominally they are still high, 17.5% but less, and when you look at collection, how much is collected, it is more around 10%, still much more than the under 3% before, but Not as dramatic impact as initially we anticipated. 2. The rest of the world has chosen not to retaliate. 188 of our 191 countries said. We're good. We actually like to continue to trade on most favored nation rule. And 3, and the tree is very, very interesting. When we look at the upswing in regional engagements, it's actually amazing and frankly these guys should have been trading more with each other. They're right next to each other and they have been kind of obsessed with shipping all the way to the to the United States rather than say ASEAN trading among themselves. So I think I'm, I full disclosure, I'm an optimist. I believe in the good of people and I think that ultimately we actually find the high road to do better and I see that this world, we are a more fragmented world, a more uncertain world. It is also getting people to recognize that. We are in this one big boat. It is a rough sea. We better row together. Well, let me go back to 2 a second when you talk about this resilience in the economy and the fact that people are not retaliating, that sounds like a bit of a fragile piece to me. Do you think that's going to last? Give us some message to the US and those of us here who are US based leaders. Uh, the Most important factor that determines how we look at the economy today is uncertainty, and my message to business leaders is very simple, buckle up. Uncertainty is here to stay. And uncertainty is driven by just far too many very powerful factors. You have technology, you have geopolitics, you have policymakers being less predictable. You have demography, some countries aging, some countries exploding. All of this is creating a foggy world. I was actually talking to Diane before we came here. We know the world we lived until recently, that we know. We don't know where we are going to land in this period of transition. That is the saying, the king is dead. Long live the what? And in this week we will see many of our members actually concentrating on how can we provide more anchors of certainty. So what we do, we do work on two of these anchors. First one is policies and institutions and we are telling. Loudly to everybody. You need good policies, you need Good institutions and you need independent institutions in some anchors of policymaking protected to private sector. I understand that the majority of you here are business people. Well, good news for the world. Private sector is more agile, more adaptable. Over the last years we have seen in many countries where there was big state presence in the economy. Including because of IMF urging them to pull back more private sector initiatives and in this time. of strong winds. You guys are an anchor of stability because you adopt, you just keep doing it. You know, I think about another quote from one of your favorites, John Maynard Keynes. In the long run we're all dead, which is another that's either optimistic or pessimistic, but I do think about that essay which I know you've quoted from the economic possibilities for our grand. Children and just the arc of the last 100 years, the progress we've seen, we're very much in a short game right now. Talk a bit about the long game from where you sit. I love John Maynard Keyne's little essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren. Basically, he says there. In 100 years we are going to be about 8 times better off. 100 years later we are about 8-9 times better off, so he nailed this one in parenthesis, what he got wrong, he was saying we would be so productive that we don't have to work 5 days, 6 days a week. We would be working only 3 days a week. And we would be writing poems in the rest of the time. Why did he get that wrong? Totally. And actually I love when I read the AI enthusiasts that say now AI is going to deliver a lot of free time and we would be having only 3 days to work. The rest we would write poems. I think, I think it is in human nature we actually are keen to deploy ourselves. We like to, I mean, we like to work. Um, let me ask you actually this, how many of you like to work? So that's the, so when I look forward, I do believe that we will be much better off as humanity. In 100 years' time. And if medicine decides to advance faster than it is doing right now, we will be there to see it, right? You know, one of the things I find So in addition to being the 2nd woman to lead the IMF, I should ask you, do you hang out with Christine Lagarde? Do you guys? We do, yes. Christine was, as you probably remember, she was the managing director of the IMF before me, first woman, so Christine came, broke the glass ceiling. I came after her. No scratchy. Well, you're the first woman. You're the first, you're the first leader from an emerging market economy, so you've got your own first. You're also somebody who did your PhD in environmental protection policy and growth in the USA. Now climate change, environmental policy, that is not something that is Very high on the radar right now in some countries. Uh, how are you feeling about that as a factor in growth? So we at the IMF, we work on macroeconomic and financial stability for growth and employment. Anything that is a risk to macroeconomic and financial stability, we have to take into account. Some of my members, some of our members say Caribbean states. Uh, they can get 100 to 100% of GDP wiped out just by one hurricane. So obviously we have to integrate this in the way we think about supporting countries. We want to help them help countries have good insurance policies. Uh, we want them to have good thinking about how at low cost they can be more resilient to climate, and I want to give you just one example why it matters. Um, Bangladesh, Bangladesh is a country that gets flooded on a regular basis, and so they were thinking how they can have resilience policies that are affordable. They worked at that time I was with the World Bank. We worked with them on investing in dual purpose infrastructure. So you build the school, the school is a school. If there is a flood, it's lifted, people with their animals go there for shelter. One of the measures that we came up, they came up and we reinforced was they used to have lots of chicken. And they switch from chicken to ducks. When the flood comes, chicken die, ducks swim. I love that the index. It doesn't have to be expensive, but you have to put some thinking and then translate it into economic activity. That's very smart. You know, um. I notice you, you bring your granddaughter occasionally to events, and you are the great granddaughter of a revolutionary Ivan Karshovski, who was a great revolutionary in Bulgaria and also a journalist. I think you started out wanting to be a journalist. I dodged a bullet. No, I'm just kidding, but, but I'd love to talk a little bit about what is your message to her? I mean, she's now studying in the US you came. An Alexander Hamilton scholarship here, give me some sense of of the legacy and how you think about, you know, leadership in your own family and what you tell her. So what I'm telling her is one change is unstoppable, unstoppable. So lean forward because that's going to be in front of you. This is going to be your life. 2, do the right thing. Even if it is not popular, even if it is not politically correct, do the right thing. This is what my father taught me. This is not what my great grandfather left for us. And 3, the world is fabulous. We have to protect our ability. To work with each other, we need to protect that, uh, making the world a really small place and you, your generation has a role to play. By the way, fun fact, imagine communist Bulgaria, we are just coming out of it. There is a Alexander Hamilton scholarship I can apply for. I did. I'm going for the interview. Now, as you can imagine in communist Bulgaria, they didn't teach us more about much about the founding fathers here. So The main question the journalists are asking, sorry, the interviewers are asking is, who is Alexander Hamilton? No Google, no phones, and I'm saying, I saw, I saw him recently. Where did I see him? And then The good of being dollarized at that time, I saw him on a $10 note. So I walk in the interview room. They asked me who is Alexander Hamilton, and I said, Who the guy on the $10 note? They didn't know. They started, there you go. This is my, my message is create, you know, never lose your cool, whatever the situation, come through it, come out of it victorious. I love that. This is also what I teach. I teach my granddaughter. I love that. Well, well. Have you seen the play, by the way? Hamilton? Of course, the first thing I did when she came to the United States, I took her to see Alexander Hamilton, and she loved it. So, so let's end on a note around back to the global economy. You've got a lot of anxious people, I'm sure, who are in town this week. What is your message to them in terms of these 191 member countries, excuse me, you've got finance ministers, central bankers, leaders. First of all, that's a Tough group to manage, but what is, what does success look like right now? So what we, what we provide to our membership is to see the world from the same vantage point. We produce global economic world economic outlook. Financial stability report and fiscal report and then we say, look at this, what strikes you the most? Three things. One, Better than feared, worse than we need. We touched, we, you know, ditched the bullet. But It's not over, so please you guys cooperate. Don't get out of this meeting. In the lunacy of economic wars. 2 Look at your finances. You're in trouble. Your debt levels have shot up during the pandemic, everybody had to borrow to support households and businesses. But nobody is pulling this support out. Why? Because people like it. What is not to like? Have the guts. To come to fiscal consolidation because if you don't, when the next shot shot shock comes and it will. You're in a very bad place. And 3, there are imbalances. Across countries, let's figure out a way to reduce them because they're an obstacle to a better global economy. Great woman leader, we have 18 seconds left. What is your message to this room of women leaders? But my message is think of the unthinkable. So you're ready when the Anticable comes because we know from COVID, we know from the war in Europe, it will come, and we women, we women are so strong and resilient we can face it. I love that. Please join me in thanking managing director Georgieva. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you.