The People's Bank of China has had its fair share of advice from the Fund over the last few months. In October it returned the compliment. Li Ruogu, a deputy governor at the People's Bank of China, took the Fund to task for being run like an old-boy club. It has not moved with the times and, perhaps more damningly, has abandoned the principles used for allocating quotas, which decide the number of votes a country has.

Much has changed in the world but not enough has at the Fund, according to Li