According to Domenico Lombardi, a senior fellow at Washington, DC's Brookings Institute and a former board member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the fund's involvement in Greece's rescue operation - the biggest challenge and responsibility faced by the IMF in more than 10 years - was absolutely necessary.
The Stability and Growth Pact, the eurozone's own oversight procedure, was supposed to ensure fiscal discipline in countries using the euro, consistent with a common currency. But it did not work because the peer pressures did not work, says Mr Lombardi, and "it really had lost all credibility".
