On Spain, Lagarde says the Madrid authorities are taking the situation extremely seriously. She then argues that Europe's bailout fund should be allowed to bail out Spanish banks directly, rather than having to work through its sovereign government (a view not shared by some EU states, including Germany).

Such an intervention, she says, "could and should" be accompanied by more global European supervision.

This is quite a hot issue, given the continuing slump in Spanish share prices and the record bad debt levels on Spain's banks' books.

On the issue of the IMF firewall, Lagarde says she expects its firepower to be "significantly" increased this week, but she does tries to steer the media away from focusing too much on the question of exactly how much new commitments she has received*.