By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 17 -- On his way to the International Monetary Fund - World Bank meetings in Washington, India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram stopped in New York City on Wednesday, and Inner City Press asked him about IMF reform. Video here.
Inner City Press asked specifically about quota and governance reform. Chidambaram replied that the “review is incomplete because the US has not voted.”
The US has a 17% vote, which can block the required 85% majority.
Chidambaram continued that “they promised to vote after Obama's swearing in, but it's gotten delayed.” He said he believe “it will happen, but later than we would have liked it to happen.”
In Washington, Chidambaram will meet with new US Treasury Secreary Jack Lew, formerly of Citigroup. Will he raise India tech visa issues? Apparently not -- he noted that the new bill that has been introduced is 1,500 pages long, adding, “we don't have 1,500 page bills back home.”
He was asked about corruption, and his answer was that of the twenty questions he has gotten in the past two days, only two were about corruption. He said that up in Boston -- just after the Boston Marathon bombings -- he spoke to MIT, an investor.
Some were surprised he continued with the Boston leg of his trip. Ironically, many international journalists based in New York have been sent up to Boston, to sit writing speculative stories they could have written in New York, or in their own basement, like “tax day is hated by right wingers.” Great insight.
At Chidambaram's press availability, in the Waldorff Towers, a coffee service was waved off; a media based on high frequency stock traders asked a question about its own proprietary data. Was this a sales pitch? In more than one way? Watch this site.
