International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn addresses a news conference in Vienna May 15, 2009

The International Monetary Fund will identify and name countries that aren’t doing enough to prevent financial and economic imbalances in an effort to detect systemic risks, Director General Dominique Strauss-Kahn said.

Banks and financial institutions have reported more than US$1.4 trillion in credit losses and writedowns worldwide since the crisis began. Many of those losses stemmed from mortgage-related investments.

Strauss-Kahn said the measure is part of an effort to better coordinate financial-sector supervision, adding that policy makers’ attempts to harmonize fiscal and monetary policies have proven successful.

“Countries have made great progress in taking a common approach to monetary and fiscal policy, as they search for solutions to this global crisis, but less so in financial-sector regulation and supervision,” Strauss-Kahn said.

In fiscal policy, coordination occurred even if it was not explicit, Strauss-Kahn said. He estimated that stimulus packages boosted worldwide growth by 1 to 3 percentage points this year, with a third of that coming from doing “the same thing at the same time for the same reason.”

Source: Bloomberg