Sir: The Personal View of Steve Hanke and Robert Higgs ("Wake up to the law of the ratchet", November 26) fails to recognize a simple reality about the International Monetary Fund's changing role over the past three decades: the IMF has responded to the needs of the international community — and always in ways that are consistent with the articles of agreement that define its responsibilities.

From the beginning, the IMF was intended to serve purposes that help to ensure the stability of the international financial system and that promote global growth. Contrary to what the authors suggest, these purposes, set out in Article I of the articles of agreement and written in 1944, do not refer to the system of pegged exchange rates that prevailed until the early 1970s. And the evolution of the IMF's activities over the past 56 years does not reflect any opportunistic impulse, as Prof Hanke and Mr. Higgs would have it. Rather, it is a product of the growth of the IMF's membership from 45 to 183 countries, of the evolution of the global economy and of the needs of member governments facing changing and complex policy challenges.

The latest severe challenge arose after September 11, when the need for the highest possible level of solidarity became so clear to the international community. Horst Köhler, the IMF's Managing Director, has committed to working closely with the Fund's membership to ensure that adequate resources are available to help member countries if necessary, to ensure international financial stability and to promote a return to healthy global growth.

This commitment served as the basis for Mr. Köhler's recent consultations with Paul O'Neill, the U.S. Treasury Secretary. The authors' accusation that they consulted on which countries would not receive IMF assistance is baseless. Such a statement simply suggests that some critics will avail themselves of any opportunity to ratchet up the revisionism.