To be eligible, countries would have to
maintain prudent budgets, low inflation, strong banking systems (meeting standards set, for
example, by the bank for international settlements), low levels of short-term debt, and the like.10
Outside of crisis times, eligibility for such a facility (even if unused) would presumably lower a
country’s risk premium in international capital markets, so countries would have the incentive to
comply. If a crisis occurred, interim financing could become available quickly without the need to
implement normal IMF conditionality, since presumably these countries had already met such
conditions beforehand. In effect, such a facility would accelerate IMF conditionality to before the
crisis hits, just as central banks impose conditions on commercial banks for them to operate, and
then lend to them in times of crisis without condition. It would be crucial that such a facility not
be used to postpone a devaluation of an overvalued currency, as was the case in Brazil, and that
private lenders be bailed in, rather than bailed out, in such a process.