World Business: FIVE CLUBS FOR MONEYMEN

The money managers of the non-Communist world meet regularly through a network of five important clublike organizations. The organizations:

> The International Monetary Fund is a specialized agency of the United Nations that has 102 member countries, acts as a sort of central bank of the national central banks. The IMF oversees the world’s supply and flow of gold and currencies, recommends ways to promote financial stability and serves as a meeting ground for both the prosperous and the developing nations. Armed with $16 billion in gold and currency pledged by its members, the IMF stands ready to grant loans to nations in financial crisis, be it from inflation or balance-of-payments deficits. Its meetings: once a year.

> The Paris Club—also known as the Group of Ten—is a blue-ribbon panel of finance ministers and governors of central banks from the IMF’s ten leading industrial powers: Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Sweden and the U.S. The Ten quietly take on study assignments for the IMF (current study: proposals for a new type of international reserve currency) and, when necessary, supplement IMF loans with their own hard currencies. In the latter case, they contribute quotas under an agreement called the General Arrangements to Borrow, which is known as GAB. Meetings: whenever necessary, usually several times a year.

> The Basel Club is a gathering of the central-bank governors from the same ten nations, plus Austria and Switzerland. The club grew out of the regular meetings in Basel of the semigovernmental Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which arranges short-term credits for central banks. The central bankers make a three-day weekend of it, gathering two days ahead of the BIS meeting for a round of closed-door talks to inform and advise each other on monetary problems and plans. IMF Managing Director Pierre-Paul Schweitzer calls the exclusive group the “best club in the world.” Meetings: once a month in Basel.

> Working Party III is a special and highly influential sub-committee of the 21-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an offspring of Western Europe’s Marshall Plan cooperation. It is composed of both government officials and central bankers from Europe and the U.S. The subcommittee passes on the creditworthiness of governments and, in cooperation with the BIS, runs a continual “surveillance” of the international monetary system. Its great power comes from the fact that its decisions are usually accepted by the money-lending nations. Meetings: once every six weeks in Paris.

>The Club of Six is a committee of central bankers from the nations belonging to the European Common Market. The Six usually huddles after Basel Club meetings to mesh Common Market banking policies, also joins quarterly with Common Market finance ministers to meet as the Monetary Committee of the Common Market.