Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, called on Sunday for closer cooperation among the world’s central banks to cope with the challenges of increasingly interlinked and complex financial systems.

Speaking at a dinner in Sintra, Portugal, to kick off the first annual ECB Forum conference, Lagarde said the potential gains from cooperation could be huge in times of distress as seen during the financial crisis.

“If policies are viewed only from a national perspective, we may end up in a world of ad hoc intervention, less rebalancing, and the potential to export financial instability,” she said in the text of her speech.

“This would be a world of possibly large welfare losses in many countries, with not just spillover effects – from advanced to emerging market economies, but also ‘spillbacks’ – feedback effects from emerging market to large advanced economies.”