A top IMF economist has quit in anger, scorning its 'tainted' leadership, CNN reports

CNN has released a resignation letter from one of the top IMF economists.

You can read that letter here »

This is an extract from the CNN report:

A senior economist at the institution spearheading the bailouts of three eurozone countries has lambasted its lack of leadership and said its first female chief is not fit for the job.

In a letter obtained exclusively by CNN and addressed to Shakour Shaalan, dean of the executive board of the International Monetary Fund, 20-year veteran Peter Doyle says he is "ashamed to have had any association with the Fund at all."

Doyle, a former advisor to the IMF's European Department, which runs its programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, argues the body's failure to deliver timely and sustained warnings to the region's dithering politicians had led to widespread suffering for those living in stricken countries and the risk of worse to come.

The institution's lack of decisive action, Doyle says, has left "the second global reserve currency (the euro) on the brink."

The BBC's Andrew Walker has made the following observations:

Peter Doyle's letter is short but the criticism excoriating. Perhaps the bigger of the two main charges is that the IMF failed to warn enough about the problems that led to the global financial crises.

The IMF has had investigations which have, up to a point, made similar criticisms, but not in such inflammatory terms. The IMF did issue some warnings, but the allegation that they were not sustained or timely enough and were actively suppressed raises some very big questions about the IMF's role.

Then there is the description of the managing director as tainted. It's not personal. It's a familiar attack on a process which always selects a European. It's still striking, though, to hear it from someone so recently on the inside.

Doyle poured scorn on its "tainted" leadership and said he is "ashamed" to have worked there, in a letter to the IMF executive board explaining his resignation after 20 years.

He writes of "incompetence", "failings" and "disastrous" appointments for the IMF's managing director, stretching back 10 years.

Doyle was a former adviser to the IMF's European Department which is running the bailout programs for Greece, Portugal and Ireland. He said the Fund's delay in warning about the urgency of the global financial crisis was a failure of the "first order".

"This fact is most clear in regard to appointments for managing director which, over the past decade, have all-too-evidently been disastrous.

"Even the current incumbent [Christine Lagarde] is tainted, as neither her gender, integrity, or elan can make up for the fundamental illegitimacy of the selection process."