one of the most powerful women in the world.

I mean, if we are to escape from the mess that we're in right now,

she is going to play a major part in helping us do that.

She's the head of the International Monetary Fund,

a delight to welcome here Kristalina Georgieva.

Kristalina, welcome.

Kristalina Georgieva: Great to be with you, Chris.

Thank you for having me.

CA: So you just took on this role late last year,

and within four months, boom, COVID arrives.

That is one heck of an introduction to a new job.

How are you doing?

KG: Well, I find strength in action.

And at the Fund,

we have been, from day one on this crisis,

leaning forward with everything we have

to provide lifelines to countries,

and that means to people and businesses.

Already, we have received over 90 requests

and we have offered, to 56 countries,

critical financial packages.

CA: You've described this pandemic as a crisis like no other.

In what way a crisis like no other?

KG: Truly like no other.

First, never before

we will inflict on the economy consciously so much pain

to fight a virus and save lives.

We are asking businesses not to produce

and consumers not to go out and consume.

At the Fund, we labeled this "the Great Lockdown."

Second,

never before

there would be such a rapid change of fortunes

practically for everybody around the world.

In January, I was in Davos,

talking about "anemic growth," growth of three percent.

In April, during our spring meetings, it was already minus three percent.

In January,

we predicted 160 countries to have positive income per capita growth.

Now it is 170 countries with negative income per capita growth.

Now this, we call "the Great Reversal."

Very painful.

And three, uncertainty.

We always live with uncertainty, Chris,

but this time,

it is the uncertainty of a novel coronavirus

that policymakers have to integrate.

We at the Fund combine epidemiological projections

with our traditional macroeconomic modeling

to see through that uncertainty.

I must add to this,

I very much hope that when we go on the other side in the recovery,

we can use a new term and call it "the Great Transformation."

Make the world a better place.

CA: Well, I'll be excited to come on to that in a bit.

But in this moment of responding to the crisis,

the main tool that seems to have been executed,

at least by the rich countries,

has been this massive economic stimulus,

to the tune of trillions of dollars.

Is that a wise response?

KG: It is a necessity.

And you don't hear the Fund often telling countries,

"Please, spend.

Spend as much as you can."

And that is what we do now.

We do add to that,

"And keep the receipts.

Don't lose accountability to the citizens, to the tax payers."

The reason financial injection is necessary,

these fiscal measures of almost nine trillion dollars are necessary,

is because when the economy is standing still,

unless there is help,

unless there is monetary policy stimulus,

firms are going to go massively bankrupt,

people would be unemployed,

the economy would be scarred.

When we go to the other side,

this scarring is going to make the recovery much more difficult.

So that is a wise thing to do,

and it helps the fact that central banks in major economies

have been acting in a synchronized manner

and that fiscal stimulus came really, really fast.

This is how we see people being able to go through this

very, very tough time.

CA: But how far can it go?

Because it's been described, in a sense, as "printing money" --

governments are issuing more and more bonds

that have to paid back at some point.

There's this term, in economics, of the Minsky moment,

where things can go very well for a while,

as everyone believes that, you know,

that the train can keep running,

the cycle can keep turning,

you know, that governments have all this money.

At some point, though, doesn't that break down?

Do you worry that we may be nearing a Minsky moment,

where, like Michael in Mary Poppins

grabs his tuppence and starts a run on the bank.

Is there stress in the international financial system now

that concerns you,

that makes you feel that we may be running out of headroom?

KG: Of course, this cannot go on forever.

I, for one, have trust in our scientists,

I think we will see breakthroughs,

and we will see also people in businesses

getting accustomed to social distancing,

to micromeasures that protect from spreading the disease.

We have seen very massive injection in health systems,

so hospitals can actually treat people that are coming for help.

Obviously, if it is to go for a very long time,

we would be worried.

For now,

what we are projecting

is that there would be a gradual reopening --

we see it already happening in a number of countries.

And we project for next year, 2021,

a partial recovery.

Not a full recovery, unfortunately,

but coming to a better place.

Now, what helps us

is something that I don't particularly love,

but I see it as a positive feature --

very low interest rates,

in some cases, negative --

that allows this injection of fiscal measures and liquidity

to be sustained over a number of years.

And for now, we do not see on the horizon

any return to increase in interest rates.

So low for longer,

and that is, in that environment, a helpful feature.

CA: I mean, the financial crisis of 2008

came perilously close to breaking the entire financial system --

arguably, it did that.

By most people's calculation,

this is a far worse impact to the economy overall.

Did the world learn something from 2008

that has helped us so far be resilient this time?

KG: What the world learned is that the financial system

has to be tested

and then strengthened to withstand shocks.

And that is helping us tremendously today.

The banking system is resilient,

and even in the nonbanking financial institutions,

there is more attention paid

to how far can you go without running into trouble.

I would say,

if you look around the world,

the most important lesson then was "build resilience to shocks."

Those who have done it cope now better.

And those who have not done it are in a much tougher spot.

And actually, for the Fund,

what we are praying

is that we will come out of this crisis with this lesson about resilience

being spread beyond the banking system,

so we actually have this crisis-management mindset

for a world that is inevitably going to be more shock-prone,

because of climate

and also because of the sheer density of economic and social life on our planet.

CA: In your role,

you're paying special attention to the situation in developing countries.

And it does seem that they're facing a really terrible situation right now.

Many of them have significant debt denominated in dollars.

In the current crisis,

their currencies are depreciating against the dollar,

making it nigh impossible for them to execute the kind of injection,

stimulus injections,

that the rich countries are doing

and seems to be the only way out.

So that seems like a really dangerous cycle.

Is there any way to break that cycle?

KG: Well, let me first separate

countries that have built strong fundamentals.

And now in this crisis,

as we are receiving incoming data,

not very many, but there are still some positive surprises,

and they come from countries that have built stronger buffers,

stronger fundamentals,

have been more disciplined during good times.

But indeed, we do see

quite a number of emerging markets, developing countries,

faced with multiple pressures.

They had the hit from the coronavirus,

many of them with weak health systems.

Then, they have the high level of indebtedness,

from before the crisis,

which creates a much more difficult environment for them.

Then, many of them are commodity exporters.

Commodity prices, oil price,

they went down very dramatically,

that hits them again.

Many rely on remittances.

Remittances shrunk some 20 to 30 percent.

And then you have a number of countries that are highly dependent on tourism.

Tourism is the hardest hit sector, or one of the hardest hit.

So, very tough for these countries,

but this is why institutions like mine have been wisely created.

The IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks,

we work very closely together in this crisis.

The IMF, fortunately,

that was one of the lessons from the 2008-2009 crisis --

make sure that in the center of the financial safety net is an IMF

with financial strength.

We have four times more money to lend today

than we had then.

From 250 billion to one trillion dollars.

And of course,

we are deploying these funds

exactly for the countries that need us the most.

And we did one more thing.

With David Malpass, the president of the World Bank,

we called for a debt moratorium for the poorest countries

to their official bilateral creditors.

And people tend to say, "Oh, we don't work together,

it's not good enough."

But here is an area where we made this call in late March,

and in mid-April,

the G20 agreed on this moratorium.

Amazing, we had the Paris Club, China,

the Gulf countries,

all agreeing that we should not suffocate the poorest countries

by asking them to pay their debts

when their economies are standing still.

CA: Is it possible that some developing countries

are overdoing the lockdown policy?

I mean, if large numbers of your citizens are already struggling to stay alive,

isn't it almost like a death sentence to order them not to leave their homes?

KG: Well, Chris, one of the most heartbreaking conversations I would have

is with leaders of countries where they have to stare in the face

a choice of people dying from the virus

or dying from hunger.

And it is a very dramatic situation for them.

Where you have a very large part of your economy

being informal,

where people live hand-to-mouth every day,

the lockdowns we have in advanced economies

are not quite applicable,

but even there,

countries are doing really well in social distancing

to the extent it is possible.

Many of the countries in Africa

were very early to step up preventive measures.

Why?

They learned from the Ebola, they learned from prior crises

that hygiene,

taking any measure you can really helps.

So again, I cannot stress enough

how important is solidarity with these countries.

How important it is for my institution to be there for them in a timely manner.

And we do it.

CA: Whitney.

Whitney Pennington Rogers: Hi there, thank you,