Strauss-Kahn says IMF has $500bn in funding

The International Monetary Fund has raised $500 billion in funding, meeting a goal set in April by Group of 20 world leaders to combat the crisis, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said today.

“We’ll be just over the $500bn figure,” Strauss- Kahn told reporters after a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in London today. “We have experienced an unprecedented level of cooperation among countries.”

The fund received pledges of $50bn from China, $10bn from India, as well as funds from Singapore and Mexico, he said. G-20 leaders said in April tripling the IMF’s reserves to help countries roiled by the worst recession since World War II. The Washington-based agency, which has 186 members, has given aid to countries including Hungary, Romania, Belarus and Latvia to cope with the crisis.

Ministers meeting today united on a plan to push banks to rein in bonuses and hold more capital in order to prevent a repeat of financial turmoil that plunged the world into a recession.

“Compensation is not the only problem in the risk-taking culture of the banks,” Strauss-Khan said. “In this meeting, everyone has agreed there is a problem, not everyone has the same solution.”

Strauss-Khan said that countries should wait to withdraw measures aimed at bolstering the economy until the increase in unemployment abates.

“When it’s clear that there’s a recovery and growth is coming back, that makes it reasonable to believe that in the coming two to three months we’ll reach the peak in unemployment, until we’re there it would be very dangerous to stop supporting demand and to begin to exit too soon,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg television.

The G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union.