IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she "would not associate" Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell "with craziness" after U.S. President Donald Trump commented that the central bank, which has been raising U.S. interest rates, had "gone crazy," CNBC reported on Thursday.
Powell and other policy makers are extremely serious, solid and certainly keen to base their decisions on actual information, Lagarde told CNBC in an interview, adding that central banks should remain independent in their functioning.
More trade deals like the recently concluded agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, would help reduce uncertainty related to trade and economic growth, St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank President James Bullard said on Thursday.The pact, called North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 2.0, struck earlier this month, has yet to be ratified."This is very good news, because it shows that despite the ups and down of negotiations, you can reach a conclusion ...on trade relations," Bullard told a panel at the International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Indonesia."I hope we can get deals like this elsewhere and we might get the uncertainty down on this issue," he said.The IMF has pointed to global trade tensions as one of the main reasons undermining global growth prospects.
Fed's Bullard hopes for more trade deals like NAFTA 2.0 to reduce uncertainty
Pakistan has requested financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund to address its economic challenges, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Thursday.Lagarde said in a statement that the request came during her meeting with Pakistani Finance Minister Asad Umar, and central bank governor Tarik Bajwa on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bali."An IMF team will visit Islamabad in the coming weeks to initiate discussions for a possible IMF-supported economic program," Lagarde said. "We look forward to our continuing partnership." 
IMF to launch financial assistance talks with Pakistan: Lagarde