Amity Shlaes, Columnist

Lagarde Should Buck IMF Tradition and Get Tough: Echoes

July 18, 2011 at 8:13 PM UTC

Amity Shlaes, chairman of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, is the author of "Great Society" and co-editor, with Matthew Denhart, of a new edition of Coolidge's autobiography.

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Men are from Mars, but the IMF is from Venus. Or should be. That’s the message the International Monetary Fund’s new managing director, Christine Lagarde, delivered when she was campaigning for the job.

"If I were elected as managing director," Lagarde said, "I would stand on my feet as a woman, not necessarily with a pair of trousers, and certainly with a level of testosterone that would be lower than many in the room today."