But you fail to mention the most important one of all: that a central bank of any country which has only variable access to international capital markets may have a problem in acting as a lender of last resort to its banking system.

ECONOMIST: Letters | The

The International Monetary Fund is supposed to be the world's lender of last resort, but disturbing questions were being raised Tuesday about whether it had all the money it needed to help the world's most troubled economies in the wake of the subprime crisis.

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