She Rules The World's Check Book

Banks are rarely thought of as doing God’s work, but CHRISTINE LAGARDE, the first woman to run the International Monetary Fund, may be the global economy’s savior.

- Maureen Dowd

For a long time, women have not been thought of as having the right stuff for directing movies in Hollywood, making deals on Wall Street, or running things in Washington. It was too risky, many men grumbled, to let women handle huge budgets.

That’s part of why it’s satisfying to see Christine Lagarde capably holding the world’s economy in the palm of her elegant hand. Lagarde, a Paris native and a former member of the French national synchronized swimming team, was a lawyer before joining the French government in 2005. She served as minister for foreign trade, and for agriculture and fisheries, before becoming finance and economy minister. The 63­year­old managing director of the International Monetary Fund—the first woman to hold the position—has long criticized “hairy­chested” testosterone and says it should be politically incorrect for companies not to have women in senior positions. She passionately believes in women as a civilizing force; after the 2008 financial crisis she noted crisply that “if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today.”

One recent night, after a draining day of appointments, she sat down in her house in Normandy, poured herself a glass of good cider, and settled in for a long transatlantic talk with me about her ambitious agenda at the IMF, an organization of 189 countries with a lending capacity of $1 trillion to ensure financial stability, promote economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. The divorced mother of two grown sons spent a year of high school in Washington, DC, and later worked at a top law firm in Chicago, so her English, like her fashion sense, is impeccable.

WHOSE MONEY WORKS?