Talk of a crisis at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the wake of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's shocking arrest on rape charges is overdone. Whatever fate and the US legal system has in store for Strauss-Kahn, the IMF rolls on.
It's true that the IMF has a huge role in the European debt crisis talks and that the timing of DSK's downfall couldn't be much worse. But managing directors come and go, while the IMF is a bureaucracy, run by technocrats, and its daily operations are overseen by a powerful, autonomous executive board, which is where its decisions are made.
In any case, DSK's departure as managing director was already being anticipated, even if the circumstances weren't. Strauss-Kahn has maintained his innocence. But barring evidence that rapidly clears his name, "his career at the IMF is over, which means that the race to succeed him is on," as Felix Salmon of Reuters puts it.
The hunt for DSK's successor will see two opposing forces at work.
One force is that of the traditionally dominant Europeans, who want to retain their privilege of naming one of their own to the post and – frankly – need the IMF to fill Europe's political vacuum in dealing with its financial crisis.
The other force is the muscle flexing coming from the developing world, which wants to end the Euro-American duopoly that has run the IMF and World Bank since inception, and argues that an outside candidate would allow developing world economies to more fully trust the IMF.
DSK's disgrace would seem to enhance the prospects for a non-European candidate, if the developing countries can present a united front and – crucially – get US support for such a move. If they can't and the Europeans persist, then the developing world's candidates will once again have to wait.
Even so, the developing world and their NGO allies should be careful what they wish for. As the Guardian's Larry Elliott points out, the price the Europeans and Americans would most likely insist upon is "a safe, orthodox choice if they are to end their gentleman's agreement stretching back more than 75 years". That means a non-European managing director could be even more hardline than the European alternatives.
Several of the best qualified outsider candidates being discussed are as economically dry as they come. While there might be karmic satisfaction at seeing an Egyptian or Turkish managing director prescribing the IMF's medicine to Europe's wounded, it doesn't make the dose any more pleasant for patients elsewhere in the world.
Germany has the biggest incentive to make sure the next IMF managing director is to its liking, because of the financial implications for the euro-zone from the rescues of Greece, Portugal and whoever else may need one. Another round of funding for Greece would jeopardise Angela Merkel's parliamentary majority. So the answer to the question of who will be the next managing director of the IMF is: whoever Germany wants it to be.
Felix Salmon argues that France's finance minister Christine Lagarde is the most likely replacement. I thought so too – although DSK's downfall reduces the appetite for another French candidate, even if Lagarde would be the first woman to head either the IMF or World Bank.
Elsewhere in Europe there are other qualified candidates, although not as many unalloyed contenders as one might think.
Marek Belka, the Polish central bank governor, is one possibility, with a varied career but lacking the political clout needed. As a short-term fix, Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker would not be out of the question, as an experienced European power-broker. But Lagarde remains the most obvious choice.
