Though it continued to run national programs with tough conditionality, the IMF preferred to see itself as a cooperative and self-reflexive partner in what was dubbed the Global Financial Safety Net.20 Its principal role, at least according to its new self-understanding, was not to discipline rogue sovereigns, but to help developing countries acquire the capacities they needed to maneuver successfully in the world of market-based finance. That this helped to extend the reach of bond merchants, financial advisors, and asset managers hardly needed saying. Financial globalization was a given.
