Lagarde Chosen To Lead IMF

The Washington Post reports:

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday chose French finance minister Christine Lagarde to be its next managing director, maintaining Europe’s long-standing hold on the agency’s top job and appointing the first woman to take over the global financial powerhouse.

In a release, the fund’s 24-member executive board said it had chosen Lagarde “by consensus” over Mexican central bank governor Agustin Carstens.

Lagarde, 55, a lawyer well-regarded for her political acumen, takes over an agency at the center of crisis discussions in Greece. It needs “healing” internally as well, Lagarde said in her public statement to the board, after the arrest of former managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges in New York.

Her five-year term will begin July 5.