IMF Chief Says World Turmoil Is Fading

Michel Camdessus, director general of the International Monetary Fund, said the worst of the global financial crisis is over, a Spanish news agency reported. Camdessus said it was possible to avoid a global recession, although the risk hadn’t disappeared because “the treatment has only just started,” the state-owned news agency EFE quoted him as saying. “To those frivolous commentators and prophets of doom who’ve been chronicling the death foretold of the Brazilian and Latin American financial system, I say today what I said yesterday: The Latin American domino won’t fall,” the agency quoted Camdessus as saying during a Madrid meeting of Spanish business leaders. The IMF chief reserved particular praise for what he called Brazil’s “courageous” three-year economic and financial reform program. Camdessus also promised the IMF will not abandon the crisis-ridden Russian economy, but that “Russia must first show it is willing to help itself.”