Sri Lanka, Oct. 19 -- The global economy and its worst contraction in eight decades overshadowed the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) annual meetings last week. The rhetoric at these meetings was a significant shift from the last few decades of neoliberal policies.

The IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva titled her plenary speech 'A New Bretton Woods Moment', referring to the place where the World Bank and IMF - commonly called the Bretton Woodsinstitutions - were created at the end of the Second World War. Her speech began and ended by referring to John Maynard Keynes; the brains behind the Bretton Woods conference and the post-World War II economic order, and whose thinking had fallen out of favour with the rise ...