Lagarde Announces IMF Director Bid

The Washington Post reports:

French finance minister Christine Lagarde formally announced her candidacy to lead the Washington-based International Monetary Fund on Wednesday, instantly becoming the front-runner in a race that has seen European powers line up behind one of their own.

But Lagarde’s bid sets up a potential clash with emerging economic giants such as Brazil and India, who argue that the world’s wealthiest nations should no longer have a lock on the global economic world’s top job.

If successful, the 55-year-old, blunt-talking Frenchwoman with deep roots in the United States would become the first female managing director of the IMF, filling a role vacated by her countryman Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn resigned last week in the face of sexual assault charges filed against him by a New York City maid.

Lagarde, a snappy dresser and childhood synchronized swimmer who cracked the glass ceiling in law and financial diplomacy with the force of a power drill, would bring a decidedly new mood to the male-dominated halls of economic power on 19th Street NW. The first woman to serve as financial chief of a major world economy, Lagarde is known as a formidable negotiator, with insiders describing her as a key to uniting a bickering Europe in the quest to save the euro and manage the debt crisis that has rocked the region over the past 18 months.