MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The outlook for the world economy this year is stronger, but still fragile. And the recovery is more sluggish in big, established economies like ours than in the newly industrialized economies of Asia. That is according to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at a news conference and in a Web cast today. Mr. Strauss-Kahn joins us. Welcome to the program.
Mr. DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN (Managing Director, International Monetary Fund): My pleasure.
SIEGEL: And you spoke today, also, about Haiti. You said that after the immediate emergency needs are met there, there may be need of a massive reconstruction plan for that country. What sort of thing do you have in mind?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, on one hand we need to act very rapidly in trying to provide this country with the needed resources. And so the IMF has announced that they will be able to provide $100 million very rapidly. But I do believe it's not enough. This country has been hit several times in several years by hurricanes, high-price foods and now this earthquake. And really, I believe, that the whole economy has to be rebuilt. So it's something much bigger.
SIEGEL: A project that would cost, say, in the tens of billions or hundreds of billions - what do you think?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, I can't just give a figure now. We have to go on the ground and see exactly what is needed. But a piecemeal approach now is not effective. You need to address it in a comprehensive way.
SIEGEL: Well, let's turn now to the International Monetary Fund's outlook for 2010. When you said that the outlook for the world economy is stronger but fragile, you added a warning: Don't back off economic stimulus programs too soon. What's the danger of countries backing off their economic stimulus programs?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, the problem is as growth is coming back - and that's the good news; growth is coming back faster than expected. But in many countries -but maybe Asian countries - this growth is mainly supported by a public program, the stimulus, which is fine. That's what the reason why this stimulus has been put in place. But at the same time, it means that the private demand is not still that strong.
And so if people were just fooled by the growth resuming, saying the figures are good, we are back to business as usual and we don't need to have the stimulus anymore, then it will be a mistake because we will have a risk of what some economists call a double dip, which is a new downturn in the crisis.
SIEGEL: And you think that that risk would apply to the United States, among those countries that you'd be addressing that to?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, I don't think that it will happen, providing that we go on with the programs and the stimulus which have been put in place. But if in some part of the world, people were thinking that it's time to withdraw fast, then there will be a risk of this kind of double dip.
SIEGEL: What does the IMF see as the likelihood of unemployment in the United States, say, declining below 10 percent in this year?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, that's the big problem. The fact that growth is coming back does not mean that unemployment is going to decrease rapidly. In the U.S., as in European countries, unemployment now is around 10 percent. And the peak will be reached only in a few months from now. So it means that that has to be the main concern, the highest priority for everybody - fighting against unemployment. And the crisis really will be over only when we will be back to the level of unemployment we had before the crisis.
POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION:<\em>Joseph Stiglitz is the former World Bank chief economist, not the former IMF chief economist.
SIEGEL: I want to ask you about an observation that many people have made about the IMF, including the former IMF chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate who will be on this program tomorrow, by coincidence, and that is that when the International Monetary Fund - or the U.S., for that matter - or just countries to continue to spend and stimulate their economies in the face of this crisis, they're saying the opposite of what the IMF told, say, the Asian countries when they had an economic crisis.
In those days, it was raise your interest rates, get rid of your deficits. What do you to say to people for whom the IMF remedy in the past was much more painful medicine than you're prescribing to big countries today?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Well, first you have to take into account the crisis in the past was not the same crisis that we're facing today. So, different crisis, different remedies. But let's be blunt. It's true to say that we learn from the past crisis. And we learn that we need to take into account not only the economics of the crisis, but also the political environment, the social cost, the fact that the poorest in the society are always the most vulnerable to the programs to get rid of the crisis. And so the problem is not only on the sheet of paper to find the right numbers. The problem is to be able to implement it for the benefit of the people.
SIEGEL: Am I correct in hearing a note of almost contrition in that statement that the IMF was getting it wrong in the past?
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can say that. You can say that. I have no problem with that. I think that the IMF learned a lot from the Asian crisis. We did some things good and some things bad. And I think that really, the world now has a new IMF.
SIEGEL: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, thank you very much for talking with us today.
Mr. STRAUSS-KAHN: Thank you.