International financial institutions (IFIs) are financial institutions that have been established (or chartered) by more than one country, and hence are subjects of international law. Their owners or shareholders are generally national governments, although other international institutions and other organisations occasionally figure as shareholders. The most prominent IFIs are creations of multiple nations, although some bilateral financial institutions (created by two countries) exist and are technically IFIs. Many of these are multilateral development banks (MDB).
Famous quotes containing the words financial and/or institutions:
“A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of gov’t as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by gov’t. Somewhere in between and in gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)
“The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails—aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)