Alistair Darling on "a formidable operator"
I first met Christine Lagarde at a meeting of trade and agriculture ministers in Geneva in 2006. We were there to discuss the latest developments in the increasingly fraught attempt to reach a global deal in reducing trade barriers. Christine was the French agriculture minister. I was the UK trade secretary. At these meetings, agriculture ministers tend to oppose reform of tariffs, while trade ministers want the opposite. What struck me was Christine's unorthodox approach. Of course she stuck up for La France as French ministers do, but she also left us in no doubt that there had to be reform and a reduction in tariffs and barriers to trade. Listening to her, she sounded Anglo-American in her view, rather than the more traditional conservative continental-European approach to trade reform. And there lies her strength. Christine spent most of her professional life in the United States: indeed her French political opponents used to refer to her as "the American minister". Throughout the dark days of 2008, when we faced a meltdown of the banking system, she was one of the few finance ministers who understood the gravity of the problem and the urgency of acting fast. And as the world struggled to come through the crisis, her influence ? especially in the G20 meetings ? was immense.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/christine-legarde-by-alistair-darling
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